The Gildatore
by Rebecca O'Lachlan
Summary: I know its a bit corny but it involves an electrical storm, a parallel dimension and an ancient history assignment on the Sarmatians...
1. Chapter 1

**King Arthur**

(The Real Story)

467 AD

Britannia, The Roman Empire

Hadrian's Wall

Samhain (31**st** October)

Lucius Artorius Castus, his six remaining knights at his side, sat his horse on the hill overlooking the small settlement that had been their home far away from home for the past fifteen years.

Bors' horse Thagimasadas pawed at the ground with one of his hooves as his rider sighed happily. "Now that we're free men, I'm going to drink till I can't piss straight."

Gawain, beside him, shook his head. "You do that every night," he said dryly.

"Never could piss straight," Bors acknowledged magnanimously. "Too much of myself to handle,"

Gawain's horse Tabiti snorted and leaned forward to scratch her nose on one of her forelegs. This sentiment was reflected amongst the whole group of knights.

"No, really, it's a problem," Bors said, looking around at them all. "It's like a-"

"Baby's arm holding an apple," the others finished for him, having heard the story many times before.

Then Galahad laughed and they all wheeled their horses to ride down into the town.

The sun was bright on their backs for once, but even if it had been pouring down rain they would have enjoyed it; today was their last day of service with the Roman army, and they would endure much worse than the foul weather of Britannia just to get home again.

As they rode in, Tristan whistled, and his eagle Goetosyrus came spiraling down out of the sky to perch gracefully on his shoulder. "Where you been, eh?" Tristan asked him affectionately as the eagle bolted down some of the meat he fed it.

Ahead of Tristan, Gawain, Galahad and Bors rode three abreast across the path behind Arthur, shaking their heads at the Roman caravan they were following in the wake of.

"Romans," Galahad said disgustedly. "If he's here to discharge us, why doesn't he just give us our papers and then go?"

Gawain laughed and looked at him across Bors. "Is this your happy face?"

Galahad shook his head, but couldn't help grinning with the excitement of the prospect of going home. After a moment, the three of them all laughed with anticipation and unbelieving gratitude that they had survived to see it through.

"Galahad, do you still not know the Romans?" Gawain said, still laughing. "They won't scratch their arses without holding a ceremony,"

Bors grinned at him. "Why don't you just kill him, and then discharge yourself?"

Galahad shook his head. "I don't kill for pleasure," he said, and then looked over his shoulder at Tristan. "Unlike some," he said, louder this time, knowing that Tristan had heard the conversation.

Tristan shrugged. "Maybe you should try it some time. You might get a taste for it."

Galahad laughed. "You Scythians are all the same,"

Bors laughed at him. "It's part of you. It's in your blood, the killing is."

Galahad, sobered now, shook his head again. "No. As of tomorrow, this is all just a bad memory."

With that he spurred his horse, Papaeus, onwards ahead of Arthur and the Roman caravan.

Gawain shrugged good-naturedly. "Home is not so clear in my memory. It's different for Galahad, but I've been in this life longer than the other."

Bors nodded. "It's cold there, too, and everyone I knew is dead and buried. And I have – I think – a dozen children here."

Gawain grinned at him slyly. "Eleven,"

Bors glared at him. "Listen, you, when the Romans leave we'll have the run of this place. I'll be lord of a town somewhere. And Dagonet will be my bodyguard and royal arse-kisser, won't you, Dag?"

Dagonet, who was riding behind them, exchanged an amused glance with Lancelot and Tristan, who both shook their heads.

Gawain grinned. "I tell you what, though, the first thing I'm going to do when I get out of here is find myself a beautiful Sarmatian woman to wed."

_I've got one in mind, too_, he thought to himself. _All I have to do now is get the courage to ask her._

Bors snorted. "Beautiful Sarmatian woman? Why do you think we left in the first place?"

They all laughed as Bors did a very convincing impersonation of a cow, and Lancelot, chuckling, drew level with him and Gawain.

"What about you, Lancelot?" Bors asked him. "What are your plans for going home?"

Lancelot shrugged. "If this woman of Gawain's is as beautiful as he claims, I expect to be spending a lot of time at Gawain's house. His wife will welcome the company."

"Oh yes, and what will I be doing?" Gawain asked, and they could both tell by the hint of belligerence in his voice that Lancelot had touched a nerve there.

"Wondering at your good fortune that all your children look like me," Lancelot said, grinning.

"Is that before or after I hit you with my axe?" Gawain asked, unsheathing the said weapon, and Lancelot, laughing, moved forward to ride next to Arthur.

"And what will you do, Arthur, when you return to your beloved Rome?" Lancelot asked idly, drawing level.

Arthur grinned at him. "Give thanks to God that I lived to see it again."

Lancelot shook his head. "You and your God. You disturb me, you know."

Bickering good-naturedly, the knights rode into the town, not knowing that their dreams were about to be destroyed forever.

Far to the north, the Saxons landed on the coast of Britannia. Burning villages surrounded the plain where they were now assembling, and their chief, Cerdic, watched with professional interest as one of his men attempted to rape one of the women from the village they had just conquered. After a moment, though, he went to look at her more closely, gave a snort of disgust and then pushed his warrior off the woman with a casual foot.

"Don't touch their women," he said, moving away, evidently expecting that to be an end on it. "What sort of offspring do you think that would yield? Weak people. _Half_ people. I'll not have our Saxon blood watered down by mixing with their women."

The warrior, smarting, stood up. "According to our laws, no man may deny me the spoils of our conquest."

Cerdic turned back to face him with one eyebrow raised.

"He speaks the truth, father," a voice said from the far side of the courtyard.

Cynric, son of the Saxon chief, stood looking in sadness at the burning buildings, fields and people that surrounded them. He looked at his father, who looked back at him and raised the eyebrow even further. Meeting defiance from his son, he nodded, seemingly in acquiescence, and then in one casual move unsheathed his sword and killed the warrior who was challenging him.

He was about to walk away when the woman came up to him on her knees.

"Thank you. Oh, thank you, my lord. God's thanks upon you."

Cynric closed his eyes and turned away. _Stop that, you stupid woman_, he thought. _You'll get yourself killed if you keep that up!_

Cerdic reached down and took the woman's chin in his hands, examining her profile. He shrugged and turned to two warriors that were standing behind her. "Kill her,"

She screamed as the soldiers pulled her away, and Cynric sighed. Then his father appeared behind him.

"Are you challenging me?" he asked quietly.

Cynric said nothing.

"If you want to challenge me, you have to have a sword in your hand," his father continued. "As long as my heart beats, I rule, and you hold your tongue."

He started to move away, but couldn't resist a parting shot. "Or I'll cut it out."

Once upon a time, in the year of 2007 AD, in the city of Toowoomba, in the state of Queensland, in the country of Australia, there was a girl. At this particular point in time, the girl was trying with much frustration to get her American-spelling computer to acknowledge the existence as a word of civilization with an s1.

You see, her computer was broken. In fact, pretty much all it could do was play DVD's, and this wasn't much use to the girl, seeing as she had an English assignment and an Ancient History assignment – both oral presentations – due the following day, and she had come home to discover that, after actually doing her assignments for the first time in her life, her stupid, broken computer had deleted them, and she didn't have a print-out of the finished copies of either.

The girl's name was Jessamine Turner.

She was a boarder at a high-class and incredibly expensive boarding school called Fairholme College, but she came originally from Caboolture (which is a city about 30 minutes north of Brisbane, if you aren't aware).

Both of her parents were dead.

Four years ago, when Jessamine was in Year Seven, her father had been killed in peacekeeping services in Afghanistan, with the army. Three months later, her mother had killed herself, and then Jessamine's little brother, Sam, had run away from the orphanage where they had been placed. She hadn't heard from him since.

Her aunt and uncle in Caboolture, her closest living relations, had taken her in for two years, but they were quite old, and when they passed away they left Jessamine all of their assets, including their horse stud (which she sadly sold), their property (which she also sold to the council for an amazing price for subdivision because of the natural spring in their back paddock) and all of their money (some of which she was now using to pay her school fees).

Thankfully, she had been offered by her school an exclusive Music Scholarship that paid for 99 of her school and boarding fees as well as all of her music lessons and the school's music camps and tours (by the way, Jessamine played the clarinet, the bass clarinet and the 'cello), so she still had a chance at a future.

Anyway, at this particular point in time, it was the 31st of October – a Wednesday – and Jessamine regretfully concluded that she would just show the laptop to her teachers – Mr Davis and Mrs Anderson – and they would congratulate her on not having flattened it and give her time to type it out on one of the school computers.

Sarah Campbell, one of the girls in Jessamine's dorm, walked in and sat on the bed beside her. "Any luck?"

Jess grunted. "Nothing. Bloody laptop,"

Sarah nodded sympathetically. "Hey, Pascoe got a DVD for her birthday so we were thinking of watching it on your laptop tonight. Is that okay?"

Jess laughed. "Thankfully, that it can do."

Sarah laughed too. "What's wrong with it, exactly?"

Jess shrugged. "It's probably just a case of terminal stupidity."

At that moment, the intercom beeped and their Head of Boarding, Mrs Scott, spoke in her highly polished, very-elongated-vowel-sounds accent. "Jessamine Turner to the front office, please. Jessamine Turner to the front office."

Jess sighed and levered herself off her bed, and began the epic journey all the way from the Upper Black dorms to the Boarding Office at the opposite end of the Boarding House.

She didn't know who it would be that was visiting her, since all the rest of her family pretty much lived overseas in Ireland and she was fairly sure that Sam wasn't going to turn up at her boarding school. When she finally made it to the office, she was surprised to discover her music teacher, Mr Davison.

He was fairly young, still at university, and they had picked him because he was the only music teacher in the entire of southeast Queensland who actually played the clarinet _and_ the 'cello and at least knew someone who played the bass clarinet. Among other things, he was also teaching her how to play the French Horn, how to deal with university assignments and how _not_ to write music.

"Hey," he said, leaning against the counter of the front desk.

She grunted a greeting and motioned that they should go for a walk outside, away from the boarding house's intently listening ears.

"Where are we going?" he asked, as they walked through the garden, which, for some strange reason, was lined by pomegranate trees.

She shrugged. "The nearest seat, I guess."

They sat on the green, slightly lopsided bench in between a bushy native plant and a huge potted lavender plant that filled the above criteria.

"Was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about?" she asked idly, watching the bees buzz towards the native plant.

He sighed. "I'm going to England next year,"

She raised her eyebrows. "Wow. Like, on holiday?"

He shook his head. "I'm moving there."

"No kidding," she said softly, her throat suddenly dry. She felt as if the floor had rather suddenly fallen out of her world; apart from her friends, Mr Davison was one of the only things that had kept her going the past year.

He looked at her carefully.

"You should have told us when Concert Band was still on, and then we could have thrown you a big going away party," she said conversationally, while on the inside her mental carpenters were desperately trying to construct a scaffold that could support them while they rebuilt the floor.

He looked slightly guilty for a second, and this look was replaced by one of relief, and she realised that he hadn't wanted the Concert Band to throw him a party. She looked at him exasperatedly and then shook her head.

"What are you going to do in England?"

He shrugged. "Playing music mostly. No teaching, I don't think."

She laughed sardonically. "That's a very well thought-out plan, Steve. Almost as if you're running away from something."

He looked down at his feet.

She shook her head and stood up.

"Jess…" he said as she walked away.

She sighed and turned to face him. "Are we still on for tomorrow night?"

He hesitated for a second, but then nodded, his eyes hooded. "Yes,"

She sat on her bed that night, listening to the three other people in her dorm, Sarah Campbell, Sarah Pascoe and Emily Fulwood, reciting French verbs at each other in a vain attempt to get them learnt before their test the next day.

"Ich hasse Französich,"2 she said with a sigh, and flopped back onto her pillows.

The three of them paused for a second, all shook their heads at her, and then resumed.

She rolled over onto her side. "When are we going to watch this movie, anyway?"

The other three looked at Pascoe, whose birthday it had been that weekend. She shrugged. "Can we just get to the end of this vocab sheet?"

Jess sighed and started getting her computer ready. "Wenn du müsst,"3

After listening to them recite ten or so more completely unintelligible words, she was immensely relieved when Pascoe went and dug through her pile of birthday presents that sat next to her bed, emerging with a DVD entitled _King Arthur_. The DVD duly placed in her computer's CD drive, and, after having duly positioned themselves in order to be able to see, they started the movie.

Unbeknownst to them, the pendulous clouds in the sky finally became too heavy and it started to rain, lightning forking across to earth in the ground some way away from Fairholme.

Outside, far, _far_ above, the satellite that directed Telstra's phone calls and messages was being subjected to the kind of solar winds they had in _Fantastic Four__4_, you know, the ones that gave them powers and stuff.

It was at this moment that Steve decided to call Jess. Incidentally, they are both with Telstra.5

When Jess's phone rang, the thunderstorm was well under way outside and the movie had just reached the point where the bloody Romans had told Arthur about the knights' "final assignment". She answered it without looking at who was calling and then wished afterwards that she had.

"Yeah?"

"It's me, Jess,"

"Oh… hi, Steve,"

"Look, I just called to say-"

Whatever it was he had been going to say, it was cut off by a massive thunder crack and the creak of a falling tree limb outside, followed by a torrent of rain.

Emily looked worriedly at the rest of them. "Maybe we should watch the movie some other time,"

They all nodded, and as Jess reached forward to turn the computer off she asked Steve to repeat what he had just said.

"Fzghwe? Asdfhjasd askdu bdshaf?" the voice at the end of the phone said.6

She frowned. Not only could she not understand a word of what he was staying, there seemed to be some kind of hollow, echoey sound coming out of her phone. Shrugging, she held it to her ear with her shoulder and used both hands to try and stop her non-responsive computer. "Steve?"

At that moment, a bolt of lightning hit the electrical wires that fed the boarding house with electricity, and all of the lights went out. The beam of electricity coursed into Jess's computer and was drawn through her to whatever was making her phone react so badly to the thunderstorm.

After a few moments of intense pain, she lost consciousness.

When Emily, Campbell and Pascoe dared open their eyes, all that was left in the room of Jessamine was the charred remains of her mobile phone and her computer, its monitor stuck on the title screen of the menu. Clive Owen stared back at them – in an attempt to convey stoic regality but sadly failing – from behind the words _King Arthur_.

Lucius Artorius Castus, known to his men as Arthur, gazed out over the damp plains of the southern half of England, lightning playing across the sky. As he listened to the rowdy carousing of his knights on their supposed last night of service – from the other side of the encampment – he wondered vaguely what life would be like once they left to go home to Sarmatia. He wondered, as he heard Vanora's brood laughing and Goetosyrus screech in indignation at a sudden outburst of rowdy laughter from Galahad and Gawain, and Lancelot's amused suggestion of "Best of three," what he would do without them when they went home.

_If they ever survive to see it_, the vicious, rebellious part of his brain said, but he forcefully brushed this thought aside. They _would_ reach home. They had to.

When Jess came to, she was lying on the ground underneath a large, spreading tree, thunder and lightning brightening the sky in flashes across the horizon, rain breaking occasionally through the tree's thick leaf-cover to fall on her face or arms. She sat up stiffly and looked in horror at her surroundings. Not only was she mildly alarmed by the presence of so much green in such close proximity (coming from Australia), but also, the absence of the boarding house – and indeed, any buildings – was puzzling.

Her fingers still had pins and needles from where she had been touching the computer and her shoulder ached dully from contact with the phone. Wincing slightly, she stood up, using some low-hanging branches as a lever to pull herself upright. The blood rushed to her head and she had to stand bent over for a while as she waited for the blood pressure to recede. When she stood back up, she noticed the huge wall in front of her that stretched for what looked like kilometres in each direction. She also noticed the man standing on top of the battlements.

She sat back down. So far as she knew, there were no huge, stone walls anywhere in Australia – and certainly not with men wearing tunic and hose standing on top of them. This had her confused. There had never been any walls such as this, or white occupancy during the Dark Ages, so therefore she was not necessarily back in time. Her mind reeled at that thought, but all of the rest of her (aside from the part that was still desperately insisting that there was a logical explanation for everything) was pretty prepared to take anything on the chin after having survived an electrical shock such as the one she had experienced.

As she was watching, she saw a man furtively sneak up to a point on the battlements some metres away from the first man and tie something around one of the peaks of the battlements. He then cautiously let a long piece of rope slide down the length of the wall. After he had reached the bottom, climbing at a snail's pace towards the soft, loamy ground, he sneaked a look around at his surroundings and crept off to her right, following along the wall.

Jess took a long look at the thick gates and the man standing above them, and then another long look at the rope that the second man had left hanging. She knew that she was definitely not fit enough to be able to climb up the whole rope, especially not fast, but the stones in the wall looked rough, and she guessed that she might be able to use some of them as foot-holds. She also knew that the possibility was she wasn't exactly in a time and place that could be defined as friendly, and any man standing atop battlements at night hearing a voice from below requesting entry would be likely to refuse. Hell, they mightn't even speak the same language, and anything she said might be construed as some kind of garbled female battle cry.

She chose the rope. However, about a metre into the climb she began to regret it. Sure enough, the stones made more than adequate footholds, but the climb depended on her putting almost all of her weight onto her arms – one of which had had more electricity flowing through it than a television station. She hauled and winced her way up the wall, feeling slightly ridiculous, and then heaved herself up over the battlements and collapsed on the stone ledge beneath them, rubbing her sore shoulder.

She stumbled down the stairs that led to the ground and then sat on the bottom-most one, thinking about what to do. Firstly, she would look fairly conspicuous seeing as she was wearing a pair of jeans and a boob tube, both of which items of clothing weren't due to be invented for a few thousand years yet. Secondly, what if they didn't speak the same language? What was she going to do? Try them in German? Thirdly, and most importantly, how the bloody hell was she going to get home again?

Her mind reeling, she sat on the stairs, until a vaguely familiar voice broke through her slightly hysteric reverie.

"If you're so eager to die, you can do it right here! I have got something to live for!"

_Well_, she thought in relief, _at least they speak English_.

But she was intrigued by the familiarity of the voice. So she crept, trying to avoid being seen, up to the corner, to try and get a look at what was going on.

All thoughts of inconspicuosity forgotten, she stood at the end of one courtyard, staring at what was either the re-filming of the movie _King Arthur_ without cameras or a very convincing period re-enactment. She could have sworn she was looking directly at Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Hugh Dancy, Joel Edgerton and the rest of them. As she stood there, mouth agape, staring at them, Lancelot – or Ioan, whoever he was – looked straight at her and frowned slightly in confusion, before she had the sense to duck behind one of the stalls that were set up around the centre courtyard.

She sat behind the stall for a while, ten minutes at least, until a pair of Roman soldiers walked past her, grinning and talking in a language she assumed was Latin. She concluded from her place of concealment that she had slipped into some kind of parallel dimension involving the movie _King Arthur_. At least now she had a vague grip on what the events of the next few weeks were likely to be, and she also had a handle on a vague code of behaviour that would have probably been in effect at that time, having done an Ancient History assignment on the Sarmatians some time ago.

All of her knowledge of the characters of _King Arthur_, combined with her knowledge of Sarmatians in general, was telling her that she pretty urgently needed to find some different clothes, even if just to cover a bit of skin that her boob tube left uncovered.

As she was wondering how to go about this, she heard another distinctly familiar voice behind her. "Hello. What have we here?"

She turned, transfixed, to behold Gawain, his arm around a young Sarmatian woman. He motioned at Galahad, who was searching for more alcohol among the Romans. "Here, Galahad. I think I've found you a friend for tonight."

The way Galahad grinned at her told her better than words ever could have exactly what 'friend' equated to in modern-day English. She sighed wearily. Men were the same in any dimension.

She reflected later, trying to find a bit of Galahad's bedroll that he wasn't lying on to occupy, that she would have expected the knights, not being prone to bathing and other hygienic practices, to smell worse, but Galahad mostly just smelt like horses. She smiled to herself. There were only a few smells the rain couldn't wash away. She also concluded that alcohol in the Dark Ages was a lot stronger than in her time; the koumiss she had ended up drinking was making her feel slightly sick7, and she wished for the first time in her life that she had chosen not to drink.

Gawain and his unfortunate girlfriend were lying not far away, and Jess had realised from the adoration on the poor girl's face as she watched Gawain that she was besotted with him. Unfortunately for her, Gawain had either not noticed or didn't care8, because he treated her like some kind of royal concubine; her job was to agree with whatever he said and apart from that keep quiet and look beautiful on his arm.

Amazingly enough, none of them had even commented on her outlandish dress, nor asked her where she was from. She then had a horrifying and very disturbing flashback to her research during the days of her Scytho-Sarmatian Ancient History assignment. It was in the library of their school, affectionately called the TLC9 by the students.

She had been reading a book called _The Royal Hordes – Nomad Peoples of the Steppes__10_, and although it sounds obscure, it was actually about the Sarmatians.

She tapped Fulwood on the shoulder to distract her from her book (_The Celts__11_) and read her a passage from the book.

"The Sarmatian men were all fierce warriors, and about once every generation in each clan, the Chief would choose a young girl supposedly selected by their war god to become one of his priestesses, what was known as a _gildatore_, the Latin translation of which was _gladiatrix._ These _gildatorae_ were trained to be as dangerous on the battlefield as any man; more so, for the momentary hesitation an opponent would feel before attacking a woman would often be sufficient time for her to have gained the upper hand in the battle. There are many paintings depicting these fierce female warriors, and their battle dress and armour was very different to that of the Amazons, to whom they have been compared. The _gildatorae_ would go into battle wearing close-fitting leather trousers and chaps not unlike those worn by their male counterparts, as well as extremely long gauntlets – covering the whole forearm – and scale-armour over a leather top that left much of their upper torso bare, in order to make it extremely clear to the enemy that they were fighting against a woman."

Fulwood had grunted and gone back to doing her own assignment, but Jess had gone and scanned the picture – a painting of a tall female sitting astride a huge black horse wearing a leather and chain mail top that looked exactly like her boob tube, albeit made of different materials.

Back in the present – or the past – or wherever she was – Jess rolled over onto her side and put her head in her hands as much as was possible due to the space shortage. No wonder they hadn't asked her where she was from! They thought she was a Sarmatian! She just hoped they didn't ask her how their war god was, or anything, or to demonstrate her sword-fighting abilities. Horse riding she could do, but she'd never held a sword before in her life12.

She waited until she was fairly sure that Galahad was asleep and then slipped out of the bedroll and hurriedly scrambled into her clothes. She looked at Gawain's girlfriend's dress and considered stealing that, but decided against it. She'd have to find some new clothes later. It was at this point that she realised she didn't even think she had the slightest chance of getting home again, and she blinked ferociously a couple of times to stop herself from crying in helplessness.

She suddenly knew how the Sarmatian knights felt. Longing for home but not physically being able to get there was a terrible feeling, like a hole in the pit of your stomach. Boarding wasn't even this bad; you knew that all you had to do was go and sit on a bus for a few hours and you would be there. The knights had to brave the entire Roman army to reach their home, and Jess had to find a way to slip between dimensions to get back to hers.

She slipped quietly out into the main courtyard again, to see if there was anyone she could possibly ask what time they thought it was, and came across Lancelot sitting by himself at a table which before had held many Roman soldiers, and she hoped briefly that he hadn't killed any of them. There was, to her alarm, a rather disturbing reddish stain on one of the benches, but as she got closer she realised it was wine falling from an overturned jug on the side of the table.

She stopped in front of him and he looked up at her. "Gildatore," he said politely, as a greeting.

"What time do you make it, gildoryae?" she asked hesitantly, thanking the Gods for her Ancient History assignment.

He shrugged and looked up at the stars. "No more than four hours before dawn,"

She nodded. "Thank you,"

He shrugged again and sighed, and then tipped his head on the side in curiosity. "It's not often we see one of the gildatorae so far east,"

She opened her mouth for a second and then desperately made up a story that she hoped sounded plausible. "A Roman officer travelling near our clan heard that we had a gildatore and ordered me to present myself to Commander Artorius in Britannia."

Lancelot nodded morosely. "Trust the Romans to invade every single aspect of our culture. If you're looking for Arthur he'll be up on the battlements on the wall."

"Thank you again," she said, and inclined her head.

Shaking slightly, she walked off towards the battlements, cursing herself inwardly. Now she actually had to go and tell Arthur that she was a warrior, somehow explain to him the reason she had no weapons, armour or horse, and then stay alive long enough in the ensuing battles to convince them that she could actually fight so that they didn't kill her for lying to them.

Lancelot, behind her, cursed the missed opportunity at not having to spend the night alone and picked up the overturned jug, drinking the rest of its contents. "Romans,"

Back in the boarding house in Toowoomba, 2007, Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell were panicking.

"She just disappeared!" Campbell said hysterically, sobbing on Pascoe's shoulder, who was staring at the still-Clive-Owen-showing laptop in paralysed horror.

Fulwood was pacing nervously around the room, but eventually she sat down on Jess's bed and leaned her chin in her hands, thinking. "She's not necessarily dead," she said, comfortingly.

The others looked at her. "Well, I mean, when you get electrocuted your body doesn't just _disappear_," she said defensively. "It's a fair assumption that she might not be dead."

"So where is she?" Pascoe asked in a horrified voice.

Fulwood shook her head. "That one's got me stumped, too."

Campbell, oblivious to their conversation, wailed and began crying even louder. "She was so young!"

The other two looked at her and shook their heads.

Arthur stood on the battlements again, trying to work up a few shreds of patriotism and failing rather dismally. To his credit, he did try for a while, and it also wasn't as if the Romans actually made it easy for him.13 He sighed and looked up at the stars, wondering what life among them would be like.

"Commander Artorius?" a quiet voice asked from behind him.

He turned reluctantly, expecting to find some messenger girl sent to summon him to another council, but instead seeing something infinitely more comforting. She was tall for a woman14 and delicately built, but she wore the garb of a Sarmatian gildatore, so he knew that her looks were probably fairly deceptive. Her blonde hair was pulled back into some kind of slide, but strands of it had escaped to frame her face in the moonlight.

"Gildatore?" he asked politely.

She took a deep breath. "Commander Artorius, I was commanded by a Roman officer in Caucasus to report to you in light of the Saxon incursion in the north and the belief that you could use all the help you can get."

He sighed. "Does all of Rome know of the Saxon invasion?"

She nodded. "The confirmation of Roman withdrawal from Britannia has been common news for several weeks, Commander."

He sighed again. "Just call me Arthur,"

She inclined her head. "As you wish, Arthur,"

He stepped away from the battlements and looked her up and down. "I trust you are ready to ride out tomorrow?"

She looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Unfortunately Comm… Arthur, the ship that brought me to Britannia went down in a raging storm on the rocks near the harbour where we landed. Most of the crewmen escaped but our horses, stores and weapons were all on board the ship."

He nodded sympathetically. "There are fierce summer storms around Britannia's shores the year round." He thought for a moment. "You may be in luck, gildatore. The previous Artorius – my father – was lucky enough to have a gildatore serve with him as well, and her armour and arms have been kept in the church since then. She was around the same size as you, I think."

"You kept her armour and weapons?" the female warrior asked, curiously.

He shrugged. "Female fighters are something of a novelty here in the Roman Empire."

She laughed. "And a horse?"

He grinned at her. "Oh, we have plenty of those."

She nodded. "I am most grateful,"

He turned back to his contemplation of the wide, rolling green British plains. "What's your name?"

"Jessamine," she said, moving to stand beside him, looking up at the stars.

"What do you think life is like out there among the stars, Jessamine?" he asked, watching the clouds flit across the moon.

She sighed. "A lot like here, Arthur, but with one small difference."

He looked at her. "And what's that?"

She grinned at him. "No Romans,"

He laughed. "Come with me. I'll find you somewhere to stay for the night, and then in the morning before we ride out we'll fit you out in that armour." His eyes twinkled at her in the dim, silvery light of the moon. "That is, unless there's somewhere else you'd rather sleep tonight,"

She laughed and shook her head. "A bed of my own sounds good to me, Arthur,"

Jess sat on the bed in the room that Arthur had allocated her and wondered at the spectacular nature of her lying ability. Either people in the Dark Ages were a lot more gullible than in the 21st Century, or she was actually telling stories that sounded plausible. She offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to any gods who might be listening for the idea to do the Scytho-Sarmatians in her assignment and wondered how much more of it she would need to remember.

She sat, staring at the moon, and wondered what she was going to do. Also, on a less conscious level, she wondered where she actually was and how it was that she had got there, but mostly she was wondering what she was going to do.

Elsewhere, Lancelot was gazing up at the same moon, wondering if he would ever live to see the rolling green plains of Sarmatia again. He sent a silent prayer of thanks to Gilioneron, their war god, for sending them one of his gildatorae in their time of need.

_If I ever make it home_, Lancelot thought morosely to himself, _I'll gladly make the pilgrimage to Gerrhi and give my blood in thanks for his protection. And if I don't, by the Gods, I'll come back as a massive war-horse and charge down any Romans I see._

Somehow, though, knowing that Gilioneron cared enough about them to send one of his priestesses to protect them made Lancelot feel a lot better about the future than he had before she had arrived.

Jessamine sat on her bed and watched the sun rise. She hadn't been able to sleep, unfortunately, even though she knew that they were due for three day's extremely hard riding north of the wall – in Wode territory – as well as an altercation with the Wodes, the meeting of Guinevere, a battle involving a frozen river and the Saxons, three day's hard riding back to the wall and then a huge and ultimately disastrous battle also involving the Saxons in the process of all of which they would lose Dagonet, Tristan and Lancelot.

She thought about it. She knew what was going to happen. She knew how they were going to die. She also knew that none of them deserved to die (except maybe Guinevere, whose pout annoyed her enormously). She began to formulate a vague plan as she watched the sun raise its head over the horizon and then, sometime later, Hadrian's Wall.

Someone knocked on her door and she turned as it opened to behold Arthur, wearing the same tunic and hose as he had been last night. "Good morning,"

She nodded. "Morning,"

He stepped aside so that she could get out the door and then led her down a long corridor. "Once you have your armour and weapons, we'll go and talk briefly with my knights before we move out,"

She nodded again. "Where exactly are we going?"

His face darkened. "I'll tell you at the same time as I tell my knights," he said, and then turned away, leaving her to follow him.

They walked out into the courtyard and past a long row of horse stables. "You can pick one of these when we're about to leave," Arthur said dismissively, waving rather uninterestedly at about twenty different incredibly muscled, dangerous-looking warhorses.

One, a tall black horse with beautiful confirmation – he was so finely boned he looked like an Arab but he was as tall as a thoroughbred15 – caught her eye as they walked past, and Arthur saw her looking at him. "Beautiful, isn't he? Unfortunately, though, we've managed to break him in but he's never let anybody ride him."

The horse turned his head and looked at her with a beautiful liquid-brown eye, and she knew that she would try and ride him, even if it was probable that she would get dumped in front of Arthur and his knights.

They walked into a small, Gothic-looking building that Jess assumed was the church, and came face to face with a Roman that Jess recognised as being Bishop Gaius Germanius. He stared in wide-eyed incredulity at Jessamine, his gaze starting at her face, going down to her jeans and then coming back up. She tried to look stony and aloof, and Arthur gave her an uncomfortable, apologetic look as the Bishop turned to him.

"_What_ is _this_?"

Jess resisted the urge to laugh. Arthur cleared his throat. "A female warrior from Sarmatia. She was ordered to present herself by a Roman officer in Caucasus because he thought we could use all the help we could get."

"A female _what_?" the Bishop asked, his voice rising about an octave.

"A warrior," she answered, tiring of his histrionics almost immediately.

He laughed at her, and so she rolled her eyes at Arthur and walked past the Bishop and into the room Arthur had been leading her towards before they were accosted. Behind her, she heard Germanius' laughter stop straight away.

"You dare insult a messenger of God?" he asked incredulously, appearing in the doorway behind her.

She walked along the row of weapons, looking speculatively at probably more than thirty pointy things commonly used for killing people. "Why? You don't seem to mind insulting me,"

His face thunderous, he began to walk towards her, and as he did so she took a long, sharp Scytho-Median sword out of its scabbard and held it up to the light to see the gleam of the metal. Germanius stopped, looking hesitant suddenly, and Arthur grinned at her from behind him.

Not exactly knowing why, she unsheathed another sword, this time a long Sarmatian one, and placed one blade over each shoulder in the same way that she had seen Lancelot do later in the movie. "You're in the territory of a different God, now, Bishop," she said, in a voice that didn't quite sound like hers.

He left soon after that.

Arthur shook his head at her and gestured at the wall full of weapons and armour. "Take your pick,"

She looked in horror at the various swords, daggers, spears, throwing daggers and axes that lined the wall, and decided that she would choose her armour first.

The pieces were beautiful. One of the tops was leather, with one shoulder and covered in what looked like scale-armour made of iron, sewn in tiny detail in a swirl pattern across the chest and back, with a gap the size of a scale between each and with the gaps in alternating places in the different rows. It also had electrum metalwork all over, in swirling, Animal Style16 designs, including a crouching stag, his antlers tucked down against his back, and a winged panther attacking a goat. She chose to forgo this piece, however, because of the fact that it would have left one of her breasts bare.

She eventually found a top that actually covered most of her chest, still in leather but this time black instead of tan, with no sleeves but two electrum (again, engraved) shoulder pieces and the same pattern of scale armour. She pulled the top off its stand, loosened the corset-like string fastenings at the back, cast a brief, wary glance at Arthur and then pulled off her top. She left her bra on, however, and hastily pulled the armour over her head. Being leather, it was rather hard to maneuver into, but she managed it, and as soon as she had it in the right place she reached around to try and do up the fastenings.

"Let me," Arthur said quietly behind her, as she realised that the top was, in fact, cleverly engineered so that you had to get someone else to do it up for you.

She stood obediently as he deftly threaded the strings through the loops and then pulled them tight. She turned around to thank him and he leaned forward and kissed her.

She reflected afterwards, as she chose a tight-fitting pair of black leather pants to go with her top, that he could have saved himself having to do up, undo and then do her top up again if he had just kept it in his pants. She shrugged and pulled a pair of long, leather boots off their stands and put them on as well, feeling slightly self-conscious wearing so much leather. She also picked up a wide leather belt with gold plating on it, noticing that the metalwork was this time a charging horse on the buckle, followed along the length of the belt by many other different kinds of animal, and a long, black cloak with patterns woven into it with silver thread, which she hung off the convenient hooks on her shoulder plates.

She then took the cloak off for a while as she realised she was going to have to sling whatever swords she chose across her back underneath the cloak. She walked along the row of weapons and was drawn to the two swords she had unsheathed on the Bishop. At least she knew basically how much they weighed, she thought logically, and they had proved to be not too heavy for her non-existent muscles – although what she was going to do with them still puzzled her.

She picked them up in their scabbards and fastened them one at a time across her back with two of the straps that were sitting close by – one tan leather embroidered with gold designs and the other leather of the same colour but with a large silver buckle. It took her a while to figure out how to attach everything, but she got it eventually. She then experimentally pulled the swords out of their sheaths and realised to her horror that the long, curved Scytho-Median sword was the one she held with her left hand, her bad one. She cautiously put both of them back in their scabbards, trying not to stab herself, and contemplatively eyed the rest of the previous gildatore's armoury.

She attached two long, heavy daggers to her belt, one on each side, and slung a quiver of black-feathered arrows over her shoulder. She then looked over the assembled bows and chose a slender, bendy-looking one carved out of some dark wood, and put it to one side on the table, wondering if there was anything she had missed. She declined an axe, on the reasoning that it was slightly too barbaric, declined a throwing dagger on the reasoning that she wouldn't have the slightest chance in the world of being able to get it to do what she wanted, and then declined a spear for the same reason.

A pair of long gauntlets hanging on the wall caught her eye and she took them down. They were exquisitely crafted, made of electrum but with leather lining, and two separate plates for where they covered the palms of the wearer's hands. She slid one onto her arm and discovered to her surprise that she still had full mobility of the wrist with it on, the plates were so well engineered. She slid the other one on, put the cloak back on and looked at the overall effect in the reflection of the gildatore's polished bronze shield, which she had left on the reasoning that it looked so heavy she wouldn't even have been able to lift it.

She looked… well, if not a little bit menacing then at least slightly scary. To a two-year-old, anyway. If she snuck up on them and shouted, "Boo!"

She admitted to herself that she did look quite good. She didn't look strange, and thankfully she had the figure for leather pants thanks to years of ballet and horse riding. The only thing that didn't work was her hair, so she reached up and took the clip out of it, running her gauntleted hands through it a few times to make it look not so wavy. The gold in her hair contrasted well with the black of her armour, so, taking one last look at herself, she took a deep breath, picked the bow she had chosen up off the table, slid it into her quiver and walked out of the room. She came back in a second later to pick up another sword to hang off her saddle, just for the sake of looks, and picked another Sarmatian one in a long silver scabbard.

The sword under her arm, she walked out of the room again and this time down the corridor to where she remembered the stables being and came face to face with the Bishop again, who looked at the armour and weapons and walked away.

"Jessamine," Arthur said, from not far away, and she turned in the direction of his voice, to find him now wearing _his_ armour.

"I'm meeting with my knights over breakfast. I assume you'll want food?"

She nodded, albeit unenthusiastically. If it was anything like the drink, she may have had to re-invent fire to teach them about the art of cooking things.

She followed him again, this time back across the central courtyard and into the big building that had Romans stationed all around it. They passed Vanora and all of her children, and she looked up and smiled at Jess before going back to work. They walked past a table where Roman soldiers were sitting and carousing – just after dawn – and one of them felt the need to put his hand on the back of her thigh as she passed.

Something inside of her snapped, and she turned quickly, resting the Sarmatian sword she was carrying against the table and taking both of the long daggers out of their sheaths at her sides. She put one at the soldier's neck and one on the offending hand where it was lying on the table.

"Hand or throat?" she snarled at him, upping the pressure on both points.

"H-hand," he stammered. "Please,"

"Good choice," she said, and scraped the blade across the top of his wrist as she walked away.

When she caught up with Arthur and he turned to lead the way again she had to restrain herself from shaking. She had actually cut someone with a knife. It was so horrifying she almost considered running away. She then realised that she had no idea where she would be going and chances were she would run into the Saxon army if she did try and go anywhere. While she was thinking this, Arthur led her into the big building surrounded by Roman soldiers who all looked a bit wild-eyed at the sight of her and than into a circular room lit by torches that contained the fabled round table.

Lancelot, Dagonet and Tristan were the only ones there, and when Arthur asked where the others were Lancelot replied that they were yet to arrive.

Arthur shrugged and turned to her. "Sit where you like,"

She chose the nearest chair and creaked into it, putting the third sword she was holding on the table beside her.

Arthur sighed and leaned on the table, looking at a map that she assumed showed the location of Marius Honorius' estate.

Tristan came over to where she was sitting and half-unsheathed the sword that was lying on the table. "This is a good blade,"

She inclined her head at him. "I didn't know that the Romans were recruiting Scythians for their army as well as Sarmatians,"

He laughed roughly. "Romans. They see a man on a horse and automatically assume he is a Sarmatian. They couldn't tell a Celt from a Hun if they were both sitting on horses."

She nodded. "It's because they're so short. Anything above shoulder level on a normal man is too high for them."

He laughed again and then sheathed her sword, laying it back on the table where it had been before. "You know the Romans well, I see." He held out a hand for her to shake. "Tristan,"

She took it. "Jessamine,"

He nodded, and pointed and Lancelot and Dagonet. "The tall one is Dagonet, and that's Lancelot. They're both Sarmatians."

She laughed. "I noticed."

He grinned at her. "No tattoos,"

She nodded. "That and they're both carrying Sarmatian swords and axes. Your blade gives you away more than the carvings on your cheeks,"

Tristan grinned at her and offered her the jug he was holding which, from the smell of it, was full of koumiss. Not wanting to be rude, but inwardly cringing, she took it and pretended to take a large mouthful when in reality she was only drinking a tiny bit (she had just remembered what it was actually made from).

At that moment, Gawain, Galahad and Bors walked in, and Arthur sighed in relief. "Finally," he said exasperatedly.

Galahad raised an eyebrow at him, but Gawain placed a restraining hand on his arm. "It's not his fault, Galahad. He didn't choose to be born a Roman,"

Arthur sighed. "There is an estate three days hard riding north of the wall. The family that the Pope has requested we rescue lives there. We ride in, we collect the family, we ride back, you get your discharge papers, we go home."

Lancelot snorted derisively and Arthur sighed again. "This is Jessamine. She was ordered by a Roman officer in Caucasus to present herself here to help with our quest, so she'll be coming with us."

"We've met," Galahad said, smirking.

She sighed.

Arthur turned to Lancelot. "Can you go and saddle a horse for her, please, Lancelot?"

He raised a cool eyebrow. "Certainly, your Imperial Majesty."

Arthur shook his head, rolled up the map and turned to the rest of them as Lancelot left the room in icy silence.

"Lancelot may have told you…"

"The massive Saxon army?" Bors said, helpfully. "Yeah, he told us. Don't worry, Arthur, he'll cool off. Given a bit of time in the rain, anyway."

Tristan nodded, looking out the window. "It is going to rain later today."

Gawain sighed, sitting down in the chair next to her. "It's always raining on this bloody island,"

She leaned back in her chair, thinking of Australia. "Man is never happy. It can rain too much, or it doesn't rain enough; but it is never the right amount."

Gawain laughed. "Right bloody philosopher you are, gildatore. You and Lancelot will get on like a house on fire."

Arthur sighed again and motioned for them to move out. "We should probably get moving."

They all walked towards the main gate to go to the north, the huge thick gates that Jess had landed outside of on the previous night. They stopped in the stables outside there to mount up and gather their stores, their storemaster – Arthur's squire – and Bishop Germanius' attendant, who the Bishop insisted would be going with them.

They walked out into the central courtyard and all stopped. Arthur bunched his hands into fists and clenched his jaw. "Lancelot, I'm about this close to-"

Jessamine placed a restraining hand on his arm. "Leave it,"

She could see from the look in Lancelot's eyes that this was a challenge for her, not Arthur.

And boy, did she hope she could take it.

She walked towards the magnificent black stallion that Arthur said had never let anyone ride him and it skittered nervously away on the cobbles, and as she took the reins Lancelot smirked at her.

"Easy, boy," she murmured as the horse pranced away again, stroking his neck soothingly.

She passed the reins slowly over his head, slipped her third sword into the loop on the saddle, glared at Lancelot, took a deep breath and put her foot in the stirrup.

"His name's Bartatua," Lancelot said helpfully as she stood there, watching the horse prance nervously.

_Oh, great_, she thought to herself. _He's so bad they named him 'Black Demon.'_

She put her weight into the stirrup and swung her leg over his back in one smooth, fluid motion, using the same tactic her aunt and uncle had taught her to use on highly-strung racehorses. Immediately, the horse tried to back out from underneath her and she saw Lancelot back away to stand with the other knights on the far side of the courtyard. She glared at them briefly before the horse tried turning around in circles to see what was sitting on his back, and when she leaned forward and put a comforting hand on his neck he realised where the weight was coming from and turned his neck so that he could see her.

He sniffed at her boot a few times, chewed on his bit and then stood still. She sighed in relief and then raised her eyebrows at Lancelot, who inclined his head and grinned at her. She took the horse for an experimental walk and then trot around the courtyard, pulling the horse to a halt in front of Arthur and his stunned knights.

"Shall we?" she asked, indicating the gate.

They stood in silence for a while, before Gawain began to laugh and then swung into Tabiti's saddle. "Women,"

Dagonet grinned ruefully. "Would that you had arrived three months earlier, gildatore, and then my hip might not ache so in cold weather."

She laughed. "You pull on a horse, he'll pull back. Objective muscle mass. One of the only animals in the world to have one. So, if you attack him to get him to do what you want, he'll attack you back. If you're nice to him, he'll be nice to you."

Galahad shook his head. "Can we leave now, please?"

Arthur laughed and swung into his horse's saddle. "Move out, men. And women," he added hastily at the end, looking guiltily at Jess, but she just laughed.

On the north gate, the Roman soldiers that were the gatekeepers were hurriedly fixing the yokes onto the backs of the two gatehorses.

"Open the gates!" their foreman shouted urgently. "Here they come now!"

Sure enough, the soldiers could hear the thunder of hooves coming down through the city towards them. The gatehorses, spurred on by the excitement the hoofbeats stirred in their blood, reared and plunged and lunged forward to reach their galloping comrades. The hinges on the gate creaked as the massive horses heaved on them and the gates swung open pendulously to the accompaniment of a chorus of horses whinnying and braying at the sky.

The knights cantered through the massive gates and turned to the west, but Jess stopped Bartatua at the end of the street with a two hundred metre run down to the gate. He looked at her over his shoulder and snorted, pawing at the ground with his foreleg. She grinned at him.

The two gatehorses raised themselves up onto their hind legs in a uniform salute as Bartatua, whinnying in triumph, galloped at full-speed out of the gates, changed stride in a smooth effortless motion and followed after his Sarmatian friends.

Lancelot looked up as Jessamine passed him, laughing, in a blurred streak of black and gold and silver, and shook his head. She was going to kill that horse before it even got going.

At around midday it began to rain, and they stopped in a copse of trees to check their horses' legs for splints. They ate a rudimentary lunch involving bread and koumiss – to Jessamine's dismay – while Gawain and Dagonet wrapped damp cloths around their horses' knees. She offered some of the bread to Bartatua, but he just nudged her on the shoulder and went back to grazing. She didn't bother offering him any koumiss.

All of the knights were looking at her with some degree of awe as they stopped to eat. Even Tristan's horse Argimpasa – a horse that was used to being worked for days on end at a fast pace – was beginning to tire under the strain of riding so hard for so long and on such rough terrain, but Bartatua – a horse that had never been worked for any time at all – was as fresh and energetic as if he had just had two day's rest at pasture.

This was causing Jess some confusion as well. She certainly didn't think it had anything to do with her, but it wasn't possible for any horse to be that naturally fit, either. She looked suspiciously at him and he raised his head and looked her in the eye, adopting that patented Puss In Boots™ innocent look and pricking his ears forward in an attempt to be endearing. This only made Jess glare harder, however, and after a while he snorted and nudged her again, and she got the distinct impression that he was laughing at her.

She caught Lancelot looking at her strangely and resisted the urge to laugh, thinking that it must have looked like she and Bartatua were having some kind of telepathic conversation. She smiled at Lancelot and wiped the rain out of her face, and he inclined his head at her and gestured at her bow.

"Are you any good?"

She shrugged, hoping desperately that he wasn't going to call her bluff. "Not bad,"

He laughed. "And here I was expecting you to be a world champion. Hand me your bow,"

She pulled it out of her quiver, hoping that it wasn't going to take any arrows with it, because that would look really dumb, and handed it to him. He took it and bent it experimentally, and then looked at her in shock. "You can bend this?"

_Oh, God_, she thought desperately. _There goes my cover._

He handed it back and she – expecting total failure and embarrassment – lifted and bent the bow in one smooth movement. She was so surprised she nearly dropped the bow, although thankfully she didn't. After holding it there for a moment, to let Lancelot's awe sink in, she lowered it and slid it back into her quiver.

He looked at her. "What _are_ you?"

She shrugged, and when she looked at him next he could have sworn her eyes turned green. "I am what I am, Lancelot,"

Thunder crashed over head and the sky was lit with a huge fork of lightning, and for a moment her hair looked black, but when she looked up at him again, her eyes were blue again and her hair its normal gold.

"Let's mount up," Arthur said, from the other side of the clearing and, after one last look at her, Lancelot did so, and they rode out towards the Roman estate.

324 AD

Crimea, Sarmatia

Euxines

Imperial Prince Claudius of Rome sat on his bed in his tent, his head in his hands, watching Sarmatia pace back and forth in front of the tent's door. He wondered briefly what the Sarmatians had called themselves before this slender young girl had become their figurehead. He shrugged. From now until the end of time, to the Romans they would always be the Sarmatians.

She came and sat on the bed beside him. "What will you do if your father tells you to continue the campaign?"

He shook his head and put his arm around her shoulders. "We'll figure that out when the time comes,"

She sighed. "I'm so glad things were coming to a head anyway. If I'd found out that we were about to conclude a peace treaty or something and then I ruined it, I'd have been devastated."

"That's poor consolation for the families of all the men who died," he pointed out gently, and she nodded again.

"At the moment I'm taking comfort in the fact that it's my father's fault,"

He was silent for a while. "We could declare the treaty void,"

She looked up at him. "Would you?"

He leaned forward and kissed her. "This whole thing is my fault, anyway. They shouldn't have to suffer for that."

She sighed again. "Somehow I just get the feeling that this is all going to work out badly,"

He looked at her. "Don't say that,"

Outside, the Roman centurion unsheathed his sword stealthily and waved his men with their torches forward into the sleeping Sarmatian camp.

Fulwood stayed behind after Chemistry17 to ask her teacher, Mr Turner18, about the front-page article in the newspaper that day.

SOLAR WINDS RAVAGE TELSTRA SATELLITE the title read. Fulwood spread the newspaper on Mr Turner's desk.

"What sort of power would these winds have had, Mr Turner?"

He shrugged. "Why do you ask?"

She sighed, took a deep breath and then decided to tell him. Let them send her to a mental hospital! It was better than believing that Jess was just dead. "During the thunderstorm last night, we were watching a movie and the electrical interference stuffed up the computer. While she was turning her computer off, Jess got a phone call. She was holding the phone at the same time as the computer and she sort of gave off sparks for a second and then disappeared. Oh, yeah, and she's with Telstra."

Mr Turner looked at her carefully. "I thought Mrs Scott said that Jess had run away,"

Fulwood snorted. "Well, we couldn't tell her about this, could we? We'd be sitting in padded rooms within two hours."

Mr Turner sighed. "The solar winds are extremely powerful. The connection between the energy from the winds and the lightning through Jess's computer – using her as a catalyst – could theoretically have created a large enough magnetic field to transplant the nature of causality into a different time, or place."

Fulwood stared at him for a second and then nodded, pretending she could understand what he'd just said. "That's Physics stuff, right?"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "I meant that she could theoretically have slipped between dimensions."

"You keep using that word," Fulwood noted.

"Which word?"

"_Theoretically_,"

Mr Turner shrugged. "Nothing like this has ever been proven before, Emily. That's just the way it is."

Gilioneron, his arms crossed, paced backwards and forwards in front of what could for want of a better word be called a portal that he used to travel between the world of the mortals and his world. He could also use it to see things going on in any part of the world, and now his gaze was focused on Jess.

"Where did she come from?" he asked out loud, shaking his head in confusion.

Sarmatia, beside him, looked at Claudius and shrugged. "Has she been sent by the Scythians?"

The war god shook his head. "No. I already asked them. She's not Greek either, or Roman."

Claudius looked at her carefully. "Is she a Saxon?"

Gilioneron shook his head again. "She hasn't been sent by any Gods on this earth."

Sarmatia frowned. "Is she… a demon?"

He sighed. "No. If she were a demon I would be able to feel the hatred emanating off her. Mostly, she's just… scared."

Claudius leaned forward, trying to get closer to the portal. "There _is_ something about her… it's strange. Did you see that, before? It's coming out in little bursts. She's definitely not a gildatore?"

Gilioneron grunted. "If she is she hasn't been initiated."

Claudius nodded speculatively. "She shouldn't have been able to bend that bow. Lancelot could only just do it, and he's a fully trained gildoryae."

Sarmatia walked up to the portal and waved her hand over the surface. The picture changed into a freeze of the moment of the lightning strike when she had changed.

Claudius swore and stood up slowly, and Gilioneron unfolded his arms and looked at the picture in amazement. "Why didn't she tell me she was going back to earth?"

Sarmatia laughed. "There's more," she said, and waved her hand over the picture again. The picture began to move again, albeit slowly, and Sarmatia let it play until all three of them could see when Kelermes, greatest of the gildatorae, kept looking at Lancelot but Jessamine turned her head to look at the ground.

"She's sharing that girl's body," Claudius said incredulously.

Gilioneron raised his eyebrows. "Poor girl. No wonder she's scared. That gildatore's got dark places in her soul _I_ haven't even seen."

Sarmatia was staring, horrified at the screen. "She wouldn't _steal_ that girl's body, would she?"

"What do you mean?" Claudius asked, looking at her.

"Look at that picture. Already, there, Kelermes is the solid one, while the girl's face as she turns it away is the spirit."

Gilioneron sighed. "I suppose I'd better go have a word with her."

Kelermes, smirking, sat passively inside Jess's body as they rode on through the day, reflecting on how lucky she had been to catch Jess just as she fell through that convenient gap in the space-time continuum. She was the perfect disguise; a young girl, relatively innocent, relatively good-looking. Nobody in the world would ever suspect that it was her, Kelermes, greatest and most terrible of the gildatorae, come back to wreak her vengeance upon what remaining knights dared pay tribute to Rome still.

They sat around their small campfire trying to get warm in the miserable weather, their horses huddled under a tree nearby.

"It doesn't even rain this much back home," Bors said morosely, looking out from under the hood of his cloak.

Jess laughed to herself. Especially not when 'back home' meant Australia.

Gawain, sitting on her left, passed her a wineskin, which she sniffed. Thankfully, it actually seemed to be full of wine, instead of koumiss. She drank some, hoping vaguely that she wasn't going to catch some terrible 4th century disease, and then passed it to Lancelot, who was sitting on her right. She then stifled a laugh as Germanius' attendant, who was sitting beside Lancelot, sniffed the wine, gagged, and then handed it to Arthur.

She looked away, trying hard not to laugh. But then she noticed Lancelot doing the same thing, and after their eyes met they both just couldn't hold it in any longer. He managed to keep his laughter down to a brief snigger, but she had to stifle hers in a coughing fit, after which she nearly landed head first on the ground from Gawain pounding her on the back.

"Must be something in the wine," Lancelot said, grinning, and she only just managed to keep herself from doing it again.

The attendant looked at the rest of their stores and said rather stuffily that he was going for a walk.

As soon as he was out of earshot, they both collapsed, laughing so hard they were crying, on the ground, while the others looked at them in a puzzled manner.

"Did you see his face?"

"And then you made me laugh…"

"And Gawain actually thought you were coughing…"

"Must be something in the wine!"

She stopped laughing to try and get some breath back into her lungs and leaned back against the rock she was sitting in front of, and reflected sadly that the last time she had ever laughed so much was with Fulwood. Just thinking about her best friend made her feel lonely, but the sad fact was that she felt more accepted here, among these knights, than she ever had at her private girls' school. She did miss Fulwood, though, and Pascoe, and even Campbell a little bit.

But then she looked at Arthur's expression and she and Lancelot both started off again, he looked so confused.

"Will you two shut it?" Bors said, swigging from the wineskin. "You'll have the Saxons on to us, let alone the Wodes, if you're not careful."

Tristan came trotting into the clearing on Argimpasa, holding a pheasant with an arrow through it. "The rain has scared all the game underground."

Jess raised an eyebrow at the underfed, scrawny bird as Tristan chucked it onto the ground near the fire. Then something occurred to her. "There's a river down there, right? Well, with it running so fast from the rain the fish will all be out swimming. Why don't we catch some fish to eat?"

They all looked at her. "Why didn't we think of that?" Galahad asked incredulously, looking at the others.

Tristan shrugged. "How many fish do you think we'll need?"

"Half of one each," Dagonet said, thinking, "so five."

"Get six, just in case," Arthur's squire said. "Do you want me to go with you?"

Tristan nodded briefly and dismounted, searching through his things for something he could use as fishing line.

Jess looked at the pheasant. Its dead eyes stared back at her in a horrifying manner. "Since I thought of the fishing idea, I don't have to cook."

"Me neither," all of the knights said hurriedly, and then looked at Arthur, who hadn't said anything.

He sighed. "Why is it always me that does the cooking?"

Jess shrugged and leaned back against the rock again. "It's a Sarmatian thing,"

They all had to avert their eyes to stop themselves from laughing again, but she felt Lancelot's eyes on her and she looked up to see him smiling at her. Her legs felt weak, her stomach turned over and her cheeks burned, looking at that smile, and she just hoped she wasn't blushing.

Arthur's squire came back to pluck a few feathers off the dead pheasant and looked at a despondent Arthur and the rest of them grinning. "Will you be cooking again tonight, my lord?"

Arthur nodded. "Unfortunately so, Jols."

"Ah," Jols said knowledgeably. "Then I'm probably going to need some more of this," and then took a long swig from the wineskin.

Arthur glared at him. "Hey, if you're going to make me do it, don't complain."

Jols grinned and took the feathers back to Tristan to use as bait.

Lancelot grinned and took the wineskin as Arthur passed it to him. "Now that we've established what we're eating and who will be cooking it, there remains only one question that needs answering." He turned to Jess and she sighed. "Where will you be spending the night, gildatore?"

She shook her head at him. "That depends on how drunk I end up getting, Lancelot."

He inclined his head and passed her the wineskin. "It's all yours,"

1 Which is, in fact, the original spelling of civilisation. America is the only English-speaking nation that spells it that way, too; Australia, Canada, New Zealand and England use an 's'.

2 I hate French, in German. Jessamine, who has a natural talent for languages, chose to do the subject that actually has less spitting and coughing and swallowing involved. Oh, yes, and they nearly use all the consonants in the alphabet, too, whereas the French have only discovered three – l, s and q.

3 If you must, again in German. Wenn may look like it means 'when,' but it really doesn't.

4 Yes, I know this is a different Ioan Gruffudd movie, but still.

5 1-cent text, in fact.

6 "Jess? Can you hear me?"

7 This may be because koumiss is actually a mixture of mare's milk, undiluted wine and blood. Apparently the Sarmatians thought it helped them connect with their Gods.

8 In fact, it isn't either. See the beginning of the story if you doubt me.

9 The Learning Centre, not tender loving care. And we didn't choose the name, either.

10 Phillips, E. D., 1965, _The Royal Hordes – Nomad Peoples of the Steppes_, Jarrold & Sons, Norwich, England (They can't jail me for plagiarism now!)

11 You'll have to find the bibliographical details for that one somewhere else.

12 This particular statement would apply to a lot of people in our day and age.

13 The Romans don't have a very impressive record at making things easy for anyone. It's one of their special talents, making other peoples' lives hell. It may even possibly be a part of their religion.

14 This is, of course, remembering that the human race has grown a lot as a whole since the Dark Ages; Jess is, in fact, quite short in 2007, medium-height at best.

15 Although neither of these horse breeds have actually been bred into existence yet.

16 The art style used by the Scythians and Sarmatians, so called because of its frequent incorporation of animals.

17 Yes, I know. She's crazy, isn't she?

18 Completely unrelated to Jess, by the way.


	2. Chapter 2

A flaming branch acting as a torch was all the light that the officers in the Saxon army and their chief and his son had to see by as they sat listening to Taris, a scrawny-looking native Briton who had appeared near their army pleading clemency in order to help the Saxons in their invasion of Britannia.

Mildly suspicious but approving of such traitorous and underhanded values in a human being, Cerdic had warily let him into the council with his map, which he now had spread over a roughly-hewn log table. He pointed at where their troops were camped at the moment and then moved his hand across the map to Hadrian's Wall.

"We are seven days march north of the great Wall, if we camp at night."1

Cynric raised an eyebrow. "We won't camp," he said contemptuously.

Taris looked at him and then at Cerdic, who was looking at Cynric with an amused expression. "What troops are stationed there?" he asked, curiously.

Taris shrugged. "Light Roman infantry."

He hesitated for a second, and Cerdic nodded imperceptibly at one of his men-at-arms, who moved ever so slightly closer to the traitor and tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. None of this was lost on the sweating Taris, who began to look nervous. "And possibly Sarmatian knights," he said hurriedly. "They're led by a Roman general, Arthur."

Cynric made a face. "Arthur. Who is this, Arthur?"

The pronunciation of his name was strange and foreign to the Saxons, and Taris could see several of the officers rolling the name over on their tongues, grappling with the softer 'th' sound and the soft vowel-unvoiced-stop finish to his name.

_Well_, he thought nervously. _At least I've got their attention now._

"A Roman general. He was sent here from Rome to defend the southern half of Britannia from the Wodes of the north."

Cerdic nodded speculatively, and then nodded again at his man-at-arms, who unsheathed his sword, grabbed Taris by the hair and put the sword at his throat.

"You're a traitor to your own people," Cerdic said pleasantly as Taris froze with fear. "How do we know we can trust you?"

"P-please," Taris gabbled, indicating the map. "There's an estate. Three days to the north of the wall. A high-ranking Roman family lives there. Look, it's on the map!"

Cynric inspected the map, and although the writing was unfamiliar to him, there was a smudge that looked sort of like a house on the map where the Briton was indicating.

"Honorius' Estate," Taris said helpfully, watching Cynric struggle with the letters.

The Saxon raised his head and glared at him, and then looked at his father and nodded. "Their ransom could pay for the entire campaign."

Cerdic nodded thoughtfully and then waved his hand at the man-at-arms, who dropped Taris, sheathed his sword and stepped back. Cerdic stepped forward to look at the map and Cynric pointed at the estate. The Saxon chief nodded again and then looked at his son. "Once we reach this point," he said, pointing to a mountain range above the estate, "take your men and grab the family. Then meet us at the great wall."

Cynric nodded and then Cerdic turned to all of the rest of them. "Dismissed,"

Everyone dispersed and walked away, including Cerdic and his son, leaving Taris standing lonely in the centre, near the fire. He sighed and sat down with his back to the table, debating far too late the wisdom of his actions.

The next morning, Jess was woken by a rather rough shake on the shoulder from Tristan, whose bedroll she discovered quite quickly she was sharing. She groaned as the headache hit her and then debated far too late the wisdom of her actions last night. She sighed. There was nothing to drink in this bloody world – the koumiss tasted like crap and the wine was way too strong.

She rolled out of the bedroll and got dressed quicker than she ever had in her life before, and then stood, again obediently, as Tristan did up the strings on her top. She did notice that he wasn't as good at it as Arthur, and made a mental note to ask someone to redo them (out of Tristan's earshot of course) when he pulled them so tight she nearly couldn't breathe.

Unfortunately, Lancelot appeared in the corner of the clearing from looking after his horse Api at the exact moment that she was gasping in pain. Aside from glaring briefly at Tristan, though, he seemed completely nonchalant, and as if he hadn't even noticed the pain she was in. As soon as Tristan had cinched her waist in to the point where it had a diameter of about ten centimeters, he walked off, and then Lancelot turned to face her.

"Help me," she said weakly, having given up scrabbling desperately at her back in an attempt to find the strings.

He shook his head at her and then came over and after a brief moments confused picking at the complex and intriguing knot Tristan had evidently tied, he released the strings, and she took a huge breath of air.

He laughed at her and then did them up again, this time at a more manageable diameter, and then picked up her swords and handed them to her.

"Thanks," she said, slinging them each over her shoulders, and then picking up her quiver, which she also slung onto her back.

He shrugged, and bent down and picked up her gauntlets, holding them out for her to slide her arms into. "It's every knight's duty to answer the call of a damsel in distress," he said, grinning.

She glared at him for a moment, and then shook her head, laughing helplessly. "One day, someone will be able to think of a comeback to you, Lancelot, and then you will probably die of shock."

He laughed again. "Possibly,"

They rode out again, and as they did Jess reveled in the feeling of the wind in her hair, the feeling of being one with Bartatua, the feeling of flying over the rough and broken ground that as a normal human she would have had to walk over.

Now that she had ridden Bartatua for nearly two whole days, he had learned to respond instantly to the slightest commands; he would change stride and turn at the merest suggestion of a twitch at the reins, or the smallest change of position in her hips or upper torso, and he lengthened or shortened his stride based on her position in the saddle.2

The country started to get hilly at around midday, and they had to slow to a trot to avoid completely killing their horses. They stopped for a break at what looked like some kind of abandoned stone circle, and all of the knights started to get wary, keeping their hands close to their sword hilts and setting guards to watch every direction.

"This is one of the Wodes' sacred places," Arthur said to her, retying the knot on his horse's saddle that held his sword on.

She looked at him in puzzlement and then looked at the decrepit, nature-overridden stones that surrounded him, and then remembered that the Wodes, as a branch of the Celts, revered the nature.

"They call it Stonehenge," he continued.

Jess' jaw dropped. _Stonehenge?_ She was actually standing at _the_ Stonehenge? Inside it? Looking around at the view, she realised that there had been something familiar about it. She would have recognised it immediately but there were no caps on the standing stones, and even then she felt dumb for not noticing.

She shook her head and then turned away, until she noticed, briefly, the gleam of the sun on something metal inside a tree to the north, where Tristan was watching. He turned and exchanged a glance with her, and she nodded and turned to Arthur. "They're here,"

He nodded. "We're going to have to move out again. Thankfully the land levels out from here on."

"Let's move out," she heard Bors say to Gawain and Galahad, and they all turned warily and rode out at a dangerous pace, hoping to lose their Wode trackers, even though Tristan told them comfortingly that they had no chance of escaping them.

By nighttime their horses were seriously labouring, again with the puzzling exception of Bartatua, but they kept riding, entering a forest that evidently led towards the estate. They galloped through the undergrowth, the leaves from the trees above them blocking out the light of the moon in some places, and Jessamine suddenly realised just exactly what forest they were going into.

She looked around them warily, and Bartatua picked up on her nervousness, pricking his ears forward and flaring his nostrils to sniff at the air around them. About two kilometres into the forest he stopped, planting his feet stubbornly in the ground and beginning, she could tell by the way his heart thumped against his ribcage, to panic. Argimpasa also slid to a halt, backing off and raising up on her hind legs to escape whatever was ahead of them.

"Wodes," Tristan said, licking his lips nervously. "Tracking us. They're everywhere."

They assembled in a small round clearing, and Jess thought as they circled nervously that it was like cattle in a stockyard; they would bolt at the first sign of trouble. Arthur ventured cautiously towards one of the passages leading out of the clearing, but before she could tell him to stop the Wodes emerged and started shooting the first known form of barbed wire out of pretty much every tree she could see.

She had thought, watching the movie, that it was probably the least scary and threatening battle scene she had ever seen, but, sitting on Bartatua's back in the middle of that hardly lit clearing, the knight's around her mere outlines in the darkness, the only sound the whistling of the Wodes arrows, the knowledge that the Wodes weren't trying to kill them disappeared to be absorbed by blind panic.

The horses milled and whinnied, and it wasn't until someone – she couldn't even distinguish who it was in the frenzy – shouted "Down here!" that anyone did much more than try to save their own necks.

They galloped madly down a track behind Arthur, skidding to a terrifyingly close halt as the barbed wire snapped across in front of Arthur's horse Palagius there as well. Dagonet ducked under a real arrow aimed at his head, the whistling sound of the loosely-fletched feathers its only give-away in the darkness. Variously, they galloped in other directions, and all that she could tell was that she was somewhere behind Gawain until he wheeled dangerously close to her at the appearance of snarling Wode foot soldiers. Bartatua's feet dug deep ruts in the earth as he slid to stop himself from being impaled on their spears.

Eventually, after they had all been chased back to the central clearing, she reflected, breathing hard, that it had all been pointless, seeing as she knew what was going to happen, but she came to the horrifying conclusion that, with her there, technically, all bets were off. She couldn't really be assured anymore that any of them would survive, so she would have to look out for all of them, not just the three that she knew had dates with the grim Reaper.

They collected their wits and managed to nudge themselves into some semblance of bravado, but really, it was the most demoralising thing that could ever possibly be done to an army. They unsheathed their swords and tried to glare at the Wodes, but their relief when the entire army vanished mysteriously into the night forest was evident, even despite Dagonet's cursing.

"Why wouldn't they attack?" Galahad asked wearily.

"Because Merlin doesn't want us dead," Arthur said, looking around at the undergrowth. "Let's get out of here and set up camp."

Merlin sat with his councilors around their sacred fire, a fierce debate raging back and forth.

"We should have killed them, Merlin," one of them insisted.

Merlin shook his head. "There may be a use for Artorius and his knights,"

Another councilor spat on the ground and glared at Merlin. "Never! They are our enemy!"

Merlin shook his head again, reflecting sadly on what centuries of oppression had done to their previously relatively peaceful people. "The Saxons are our enemy. We need Arthur's help if we are going to save our country."

_And may the Gods have mercy on my soul_, he thought sadly_, that I ask help of a Roman._

The rain poured in sheets from the sky, and, even sheltered as they were up against the wide-spreading trees of the forest, the rain was driven almost horizontally into their faces. After a while it wore off into just the normal British downpour, and Jess thought vaguely that if she ever got home again the lack of water would shock her. Only, Tristan, calmly sharpening his sword, was unaffected by all the rain.

"Oh, I hate this bloody island!" Gawain shouted at the rain, the Gods and them, collectively. "If it's not raining, it's snowing."

"If it's not snowing, it's foggy," Galahad added morosely.

"And that's the summer," Lancelot put in, shaking his head.

"The rain is good," Bors said, thinking. "It washes all the blood away."

They were all silent for a while, and Jess knew that Bors didn't just mean the blood from all the men they had killed over the years. He also meant that the rain was so depressing by itself that it helped them forget the loss of their kinsmen, here on this island. Just thinking about it made her angry. They shouldn't even have been here in the first place, she thought angrily, clenching her jaw, but it was far too late now. That had all been sealed centuries ago with Imperial Prince Claudius of Rome and a young girl called Sarmatia.

She had been a slave in Rome for years before she ran away to the east; to the Danubian valley, where she had met a race of people called the Sauromatae, who had no real leader and mostly lived in clans. They were also heading towards a clash with the Romans, because the Danubian valley was Roman territory, and they were starting, in Roman eyes, an incursion.

So the emperor sent his young son – of around the same age as Sarmatia, funnily enough – with some of the Empire's army, to quash the Sarmatian threat. Sarmatia heard of the threatened Roman invasion and desperately tried to mobilise all the clans into uniting under one ruler to fight back, but they had bickered amongst themselves over who would lead them until someone had suggested that she be their leader.

They met the Romans on the battlefield and eventually a stalemate was called, and the Sauromataeans, after careful consultation with all of the chiefs, agreed to send their sons – just one generation, mind you – to fight with the Roman army.

As the Imperial prince was taken around all of the clans to recruit the said boys, he and Sarmatia had fallen in love and struck up a liaison, the end result of which was his abdication and his abolishment of the treaty. In return, his father had the Roman soldiers with him kill everyone in his camp, including him and Sarmatia, slaughtering sleeping Sauromataean soldiers by the hundreds.

From then on, the Romans called the Sauromatae the Sarmatians, and the name stuck, probably because it was easier to pronounce. A new treaty had also been forced on the Sarmatians, one that bound every boy and his sons unto the ending of the empire to their army.

She was brought out of her reverie by Gawain laughing.

"I'm going for a piss," Bors said, standing up and moving away, and she realised with a slight twinge of disappointment that she had just missed one of the knights' funniest moments together.

They didn't have much to eat that night; mostly soggy bread and a bit of dried meat left over from the night before. They had also, unfortunately, drunk all of the wine, so there was only koumiss left.

She sighed, and vowed to sleep in her own bed that night.

Later, when they were all asleep, Gilioneron stepped through his nifty little portal thingy and landed right where they were all sleeping. A few of the knights stirred, feeling the close proximity to their God, but they were mostly too drunk to notice. He walked over to where Gawain and Jess were sharing the same bedroll and shook his head at them.

_Kelermes_, he said in her mind, resonating the thought at a subconscious level so as not to wake Jessamine.

There was no answer, but he knew she was there, he could feel her presence.

_What do you do here?_ he asked, firmer this time, adding undertones of "tell me or I'll torture you".

She laughed, from somewhere deep inside Jess's mind, and an image rose in Gilioneron's mind of death. Dying. Specifically, the death of the knights who lay sleeping around him, and Arthur most of all. He pulled his mind away from hers, shaking his head, and was about to command her to leave Jess's body when he realised that he didn't actually have any power over her, as she was now, inside the object of another world.

Lancelot stirred behind him and started to get up, and he cast a furious look at the sleeping Jessamine before slowly fading back into the night and returning to _his_ world.

It was up to Jessamine, now, and all they could do was hope that she was strong enough to take on the challenge.

_Have courage, girl_, he thought to himself_, you're going to need it_.

1 I fiddled with the distances somewhat, because realistically England isn't that small. I understand that they had to shorten everything for the movie so that they could fit everything in, but really, on the rough terrain of Dark Ages Britain with, say, one thousand troops, it would take more than three days to get to Hadrian's Wall from where they landed, south of Scotland. Sorry if this annoys anyone.

2 This is actually something that horses can be taught to do; forward means go, gallop, get faster, and back in the saddle means, whoa, look out, there's a cliff edge there.


	3. Chapter 3

She woke up early that morning, just as the sun was rising, and thought amusedly that any other bunch of knights anywhere else around the world would have been up by now. It took the Sarmatians to invent the lazy yet more than competent knight, she thought to herself, maneuvering out from underneath Gawain and pulling her clothes on.

She actually managed to find the strings on the back of her top this morning, and she was just wondering if she could tie it in a fairly vague knot without sliding the strings through the loops and if it would still work when someone appeared behind her and started doing up the fastenings for her.

She could tell it Lancelot by the way she could _feel_ his smirk, even from behind her.

She sighed. "One of these days I'll figure out how to do it,"

He laughed. "Oh, I'm sure."

She glared at him. "Don't you patronise me,"

Arthur came into the clearing and raised an eyebrow at them, then turned away to wake up his squire. "We should probably get everyone up, I suppose,"

"You wake up Gawain, and I'll do everyone else," Lancelot said to her, and she glared at him harder. This only caused him to laugh, however, so she sighed and turned to do as he said.

They actually ate breakfast that morning, which surprised her, because they hadn't yesterday.

"It means we're getting close to where we're going," Lancelot whispered in her ear as he saw her looking confusedly at the meat and eggs Arthur was frying on a flat rock in the coals.

Looking at the scene, she couldn't help thinking about what modern historians would say faced with an image of King Arthur cooking eggs for his knights.

"That means we can ease off the pace a bit on the horses, doesn't it?" she whispered back, looking concernedly at their drooping mob of horses.

Lancelot nodded. "Let's hope so. But we still have to hurry quite a bit, because if the Saxons reach the estate before we do not only will we have to race them back to the wall, we'll never get home."

Arthur even brought out some cheese for them to eat that morning, and they wolfed it down like… well, wolves, and then climbed onto their horses' backs, their eagerness and desperation to reach the estate before the coming Saxon army clearly evident on every knights' face. Jols, however, just looked passive, the same as usual, and Germanius' attendant looked slightly sick, but everyone else was stoically determined.

They rode through the rest of the forest at a trot, trying to conserve their horses' energy, but once outside they broke into a fast canter again. As they rode, Jess noticed how beautiful and ever-changing the scenery was, so different to Australia.

Thankfully, it was mid-morning when they saw the huge estate house on the horizon, and they picked up pace to get there quicker. Every second counted with the Saxons, they knew, and they had to hurry if they were going to get everyone – Alecto most importantly – out and back to the Wall.

As they rode up to the gates, Tristan split off from the main group to ascertain how much time they had. The gates swung closed as they approached, which was fairly pointless, Jess thought, looking around at them all. Not only was Arthur wearing the armour of a Roman officer, they all looked too exhausted to be any threat anyway.

"Who goes there?" the guard at the top of the gate shouted.

"Arthur Castus and the Sarmatian knights," Arthur replied, cricking his neck looking up at them.

The gates swung open almost immediately, and a pudgy little man wearing a toga waddled out through the gates. "Oh, it is a wonder you have come!" he said warmly. "Artor and his knights!"

He tried to reach out a hand to touch Galahad's horse Papaeus on the neck but the horse, obviously being able to smell Romans, backed away. Jess almost admired the dauntlessness of the fat little Roman man as he continued without even letting his offense show, but then she remembered all the stuff he did and that disappeared.

She looked uneasily at the gathering peasants, exchanging a look with Lancelot. She hadn't remembered them being so hungry-looking. There was one woman, near Gawain, who looked as if she was about to start eating Tabiti's chain-mail.

"We are here to supervise the evacuation of your estate," Arthur said, as his horse shifted warily under the hungry-eyed gaze of the peasants.

Honorius shook his head in confusion. "What? That's not possible. These are our lands, given to us by the Pope."

Arthur nodded. "I have orders from Rome to bring you all back to Hadrian's Wall."

"That is not possible," Honorius said, some of his confusion turning to anger.

Arthur looked at him. "Where is Alecto?" he said, addressing the question to everyone in general.

As one, all the peasants' eyes flew upward, to where a slender young boy stood against the battlements. "I am Alecto," he said confidently, and Jess noticed, looking at him, that he wouldn't have been much older than eighteen, which was older than her, anyway.

"Alecto is my son," Honorius blustered, trying to get the focus put back on him.

Arthur nodded. "I have been commanded by Rome to bring Alecto back to the Wall."

Honorius shook his head. "Everything we have is here! We will not leave."

"You're about to give your land to the Saxons," Arthur said, glancing around at the peasants, who had just moved closer.

Honorius glared at him for a second. "Then Rome will send an army."

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "They have. Us. We'll leave as soon as you're ready."

Honorius shook his head and turned to walk away, evidently expecting that what he had said was an end on the conversation.

"Honorius," Arthur said, dangerously.

He glared at the little man and then moved his horse forward slightly so that they were right in front of the now sweating Honorius. "Until I bring you and your family back to the wall, my knights can't return home. So you're coming with me if I have to tie you to my horse and drag you all the way back to the great Wall myself,"

Jess exchanged an amused glance with Lancelot, who was not bothering to conceal his grin, as Arthur added, completely insincerely, "My lord,"

The fat little man glared at Arthur for a while, and then gave in, and looked at the men-at-arms beside him, motioning at the peasants. The soldiers started gabbing the people and throwing them on the ground to push them back towards their jobs.

"Get back to work," one said roughly to a young boy, throwing him onto the ground, and Jess noticed that he came up with a cut on his face.

She caught Gawain's eye and they shared a horrified glance before she moved Bartatua to stand beside Arthur, thinking to speed up a bit of their movement.

She pointed at the small room on the side of the battlements that held the Christian temple, as the priests walled it up, and directed Arthur's attention towards it.

"What do you think is in there?"

He frowned and then looked around at the rest of the courtyard leading up to the grandiose villa, and noticed the man hanging in chains. He dismounted and drew his sword, going over – followed by the peasants – to see what was going on.

"Oh, Gilioneron," Lancelot groaned, watching him. "He's off on another bloody moral crusade."

She looked at him. "Does he do this often?"

Gawain nodded, snorting derisively. "Every mission we've ever had. Arthur has a preoccupation with saving people."

There was a pause. "That came out wrong," Gawain said, flushing. "I didn't mean-"

"I know what you meant." Jess said, looking down at the saddle. "There's a time and a place, I guess."

They all nodded, and Bors went over to make sure that Arthur didn't get beaten up by the Roman bully-boy legionnaires.

They sat their horses and watched as Arthur showed the first true shreds of leadership Jess had ever seen him show.

"Marius is not of God!" he roared, waving his sword at them in a disturbing manner. "And you, _all of you_, were free from your first breath!"

Jess raised an eyebrow at Lancelot, and reflected how sad it was that the influence of Rome had corrupted Arthur so much that he could see the rightful freedom of unrelated slaves, but he couldn't stand up for the lives of his knights, his men, his friends through his fifteen years of service here in Britannia.

Arthur strode angrily back over towards them, after shouting at the peasants to mobilise themselves. To her relief, he walked straight towards the Christian temple that was being walled up, grabbed one of the priests by the front of his robe and asked the gibbering man what exactly it was that their master felt he had to wall up, to the detriment of his safety.

The Roman soldiers guarding the priests came over with their swords out, but Gawain and Lancelot drew their own swords and nudged their horses over to collide with the men, at which they stopped helplessly. As they did so, they all heard the distant thudding of Saxon war drums, and their horses shifted uncomfortably.

Marius and Alecto and the poor unfortunate woman who happened to be married into the Honorius family came over, all looking worried, although Marius' fear was mixed with affront and anger.

"Stop what you are doing!" he shouted imperiously, at which Arthur simply looked at Dagonet and nodded at the partly walled-in section of the door.

Lancelot sighed. "Arthur, we don't have the time,"

"Do you not hear the drums?" Galahad asked desperately.

Dagonet looked at them and then dismounted reluctantly, unsheathing his battleaxe. He then walked up to the door and slammed at the rocks with all of his considerable power, breaking down the wall that the priests had so carefully spent so much time constructing.

Dagonet kicked at the door once and then turned to Arthur. "It's locked."

Arthur looked at the Roman soldiers. "Key,"

One of them glared stonily at Arthur, but the other one felt the blade of Bors sword on his back and gulped hard. "It is locked… from the inside."

Arthur nodded at Dagonet again, and the big man kicked at the door a few times until it came open, busted off its hinges.

------------------

The knights sighed and gradually dismounted, following Arthur into the gathering dark. The smell was horrific, and Jess had to actually tear a piece of cloth off the bottom of her cloak and cover her face with it to even be able to get inside. Lancelot looked at her strangely but she ignored him; there was no way she was going to let herself catch some terrible disease in this place.

Gawain grabbed some torches and then pushed the two outraged priests into the catacomb with the majority of the knights, although Bors and a newly arrived Tristan stayed outside to stop Honorius from following them into the temple of death. It was dark and gloomy, even with the torches, and they walked towards the voice that was praying in what sounded like Latin.

Jess, however, was distracted by a door at one end of a corridor that she didn't remember from the movie. It was a big, thick wooden door, but she could hear some faint cries from behind it. She moved towards it cautiously, holding her torch high, trying to hear what or who was crying from behind there. There was a lot of shouting and some clanging of swords on chains from where Arthur and the knights were discovering both Guinevere and the little boy, Lucan, but she put her ear to the door and heard several female voices crying and moaning in a different language.

Dagonet came past her carrying Lucan and she grabbed Lancelot and Galahad as they went past, motioning at the door. "There's someone behind there."

Lancelot exchanged a look with Arthur, who was carrying Guinevere behind them.

"I'll look after these, you deal with that," Arthur said, moving past them. They nodded and Jess handed the torch to Lancelot, twisting the door handle experimentally. It was locked.

Lancelot handed her the torch back and kicked at the door, but it didn't budge. They exchanged a couple of looks and then the three of them tried it at the same time, and after about four goes it came open, revealing a horrifying sight.

Young girls chained to raised stone slabs littered the reeking room, and a few were hung up by chains from their wrists on the walls. She exchanged a horrified glance with Galahad and they moved into the room to where they could hear one of the girls moaning.

She was chained to a higher stone pillar, and she was pregnant. By the looks of it, she wouldn't be pregnant for very much longer, or even alive, seeing as she was actually in labour. Galahad took one look at her and then nearly ran away, but Jess grabbed his arm. "Start unchaining people,"

She turned to the young girl on the closest slab to the pregnant girl. "How long has she been in labour?"

The dark-haired young girl – a Scythian, Jess noticed, judging by the tattoos on her cheeks – shook her head, and Jess nodded, thinking that they probably wouldn't exactly have had a system for telling the time in those dank catacombs.

Lancelot was letting girls down from the walls, and a shocking amount of them were dead. He found one that was still breathing, however, and motioned to Jess that he would come back after he had taken her up to the others. Galahad unchained the pregnant girl and she immediately put her hands on her awkwardly distended stomach. Jess unchained the Scythian girl and turned to Galahad.

"I'll take her up to the others and send for some water for this one. We won't be able to move her. You check to see if any of the others are alive."

Galahad nodded grimly and put his gauntleted fist next to the mouth of one of the closest girls, checking for the mist of her breath.

She swung the young Scythian girl – who would actually have been about her age – into her arms and was horrified by how light she was. She carried the girl out into the sunlight, wincing as her eyes got accustomed to the bright light of day. Lancelot took the girl from her and placed her gently on the ground, waving Gawain – who was holding the water – over to them.

"How's the other girl?" he asked.

She shook her head and turned to Honorius' wife. "There's a young girl in labour down there. Bring some hot water."

She turned to Gawain. "Bring some of that water, too, or she'll die before the child is even born."

"The son of God is born!" one of the priests said wonderingly, hurrying down into the dim tombs.

She grabbed him by the front of his robes and snarled at him. "That is _not_ the son of God, you lying, thieving, bastard! For all that poor girl knows, it's probably _your_ bloody child!"

She pushed him away and waved Gawain down into the catacombs with the water, followed closely by Tristan and Lancelot.

She led them to the room with all the girls, where Galahad was standing helplessly in the centre. "They're all dead," he said, dropping his arm from one of their mouths.

The pregnant girl was now moaning wordlessly, and Jess suspected that she would have been screaming if her mouth hadn't been so dry.

Gawain poured some of the water into her mouth and she coughed weakly and then screamed, the piercing sound breaking the still air of the catacombs, and Galahad and Jess had to take one of her arms each to keep her from rolling off the stone slab in her pain, and she could see that Galahad's face was pale in shock and horror.

He looked at her. "Is it always like this?"

She glared at him, affronted. "Do I look like I've ever had children to you?"

He floundered. "Well… I mean… I suppose I just…"

"She's a Hellene1," Tristan said, rescuing Galahad.

They looked at her closely and wondered how Tristan was able to tell such a thing from just looking at her, but shook their heads and returned to the job at hand.

_Wait on,_ Jess thought slowly. _Ancient Greeks. They had a goddess of childbirth, didn't they?_

She thought back to her ancient history lessons, and then remembered Artemis, the Greek goddess of freedom, nature, the moon and, thankfully, childbirth also.

She turned to the writhing Greek girl. "Artemis watches over you. You're going to be all right."

As she said this, Honorius' wife came down with the warm water and took the young Greek girl's hand. The girl moaned and then closed her eyes, and, miraculously, her breathing lengthened and her pain seemed to disappear.

"What did you do?" Lancelot whispered to her, in awe.

She shrugged helplessly. "I just told her that their goddess of childbirth was watching over her,"

Lancelot looked at her. "Is she?"

They all looked at each other, and then around the room. They looked at Honorius' wife.

She turned to them. "You'll be able to move her now. We should probably get her out into the air."

They all watched her for a few seconds before she turned and went out of the room, and then motioned impatiently at them. "Come on,"

Galahad picked the young girl up carefully and they all walked up and out into the air.

They emerged into the light and the girl began to cry, trying to shield her eyes from the light. Arthur looked at them all, horrified, and they realised then that they were mostly covered in blood. Galahad was soaked in it.

"You'd think the second coming would have had the grace to not kill his mother," Jess said to Lancelot, and then laughed at his puzzled expression. "It's a Christian thing."

A few other ladies from amongst the peasants came over, at Honorius' wife's orders – or Artemis, whatever was going on there – and the knights were grateful for the opportunity to back off. Jess took one look at it all and then followed Lancelot over to where Arthur was standing. Only Galahad, who was left supporting the Greek girl, stayed.

Tristan was talking to the young Scythian girl, and Arthur was rather foolishly trying to assure Guinevere of her safety by telling her that he was an officer of Rome. She and Lancelot exchanged a look. If it had been her, the first thing she would have done upon hearing that Arthur was Roman would be to get up and run. Dagonet and Germanius' assistant were worrying over Lucan and Gawain was with the only other live young girl, trying to get her to drink some water.

He pointed at the tattoos on her legs and the carved scars on her face. "She's a Saxon,"

They all looked at each other. "If we're caught with her…" Lancelot said worriedly, looking at Jess and then Arthur.

"Yeah, and keep her away from weapons or she'll finish us off herself," Bors put in, and they all moved their sword and dagger hilts out of her reach.

"Am I needed here?" Tristan asked, standing up and handing the Scythian girl to Jols. "I'll go and see what our options are."

Arthur nodded briefly and then Lancelot looked at the milling crowd of peasants. "I'll go and get them organised, Arthur,"

He grabbed Jess's arm as he walked and pulled her with him. As they passed the small crowd around the young Greek girl they noticed Galahad holding her hand and shared a knowing look. As they approached, the peasants looked at them in horror and they looked down and realised that they were still covered in blood.

"How are things going?" Lancelot asked the scrawny man who seemed to be doing the most yelling at people, and therefore was probably in charge.

He shrugged. "They aren't moving quickly enough,"

Jess nodded. "We can see that,"

Lancelot looked at her. "I reckon we could frighten them into getting a move on. What do you think?"

Slightly flattered that he valued her opinion, she nodded. "Will you do the honours?"

He nodded and then whistled for Api, and when he came over he swung into the saddle, hoping to catch everyone's attention by trotting up and down the rough coloumn. It worked, and after a while they all looked rather nonchalantly at him, as if wondering what was going on now.

"People," he said, trotting past her. "You don't seem to actually be quite aware of the immense danger that you're all in. Arthur mentioned a vast and terrible army, yes, but did he mention that it was the Saxons?"

There was a stir among the people. _Ah_, Jess thought to herself. _Obviously not_.

"The Saxons?" the man in charge asked in a horrified voice.

"When they come," Lancelot continued, "they will kill every man, woman and child, burn every village, steal everything they see and lay waste every field. They are no more than half a day's march from here. If you do not move faster, _they will reach here before you have a chance to leave_."

"That got their attention," Jess said idly, looking at the madly hurrying scramble piling everything they could find onto their carts.

Lancelot nodded. "Let's hope it does the same thing to that crowd over there,"

They looked over and saw that Arthur seemed to have gotten into some kind of fight with Honorius. They turned to walk back over, Lancelot dismounting to stand beside her, but then they heard a small voice begin to wail, the shrill sound filling the still, snowy air and breaking the silence around the clearing.

"Good healthy lungs," Lancelot said, wincing as the baby's crying hit a particularly shrill note.

She shook her head. "We have to get ready to move or everyone's going to die here on this bloody estate."

He nodded. "It wasn't the peasants I was worried about when I made that speech."

-----------------------

About an hour later they were finally on the road, but Jess sat sulking in the cart with the three young girls, while Dagonet watched over Lucan, Galahad fussed over the Greek girl and her baby and Honorius' wife sat in the corner. Bloody Arthur had suggested that she ride with the girls, and she had literally been about to slap him when the Saxon war drums started up again and she clenched her jaw and hopped into the cart. Bartatua trotted nearby, led by Lancelot, who would turn and grin at her at regular intervals.

"How's the boy?" she asked Dagonet quietly.

He looked at her, and then back at his young charge. "He burns. Brave boy,"

"His name is Lucan," Guinevere said softly, looking at the sleeping boy.

Jess looked at her. "Do you know his family?"

Guinevere nodded. "They're all dead,"

Jess nodded and then sighed and leaned back against the back of the cart. Then she caught sight of Guinevere's bandaged hands and grimaced, remembering the horrific torture she had undergone. She leaned over and reached for Guinevere's hand, and she closed her eyes briefly and then let Jess unwrap the bandage.

She looked in horror at all of the out-of-place joints and then looked up at Guinevere. "This will hurt,"

She wasn't as good at it as Arthur had been in the movie, because she actually had to look at each one individually and then snap it back into place, and by the end Guinevere was crying and biting her lip so hard it was bleeding. She let go of Guinevere's hand and then sat back with the girl against the side wall of the cart, catching Lancelot's eyes as he looked back over his shoulder at her. He looked down for a second, and then back up, until, embarrassed, they both looked away.

She turned to the Scythian girl. "Are you injured?"

She shrugged, but Jess noticed her stiffly clutching her arm in close to her side.

She sighed and reached out to turn it over. "What's your name?"

"Cimmeria," the young girl said softly, as Jess looked in horror at the long, infected scar that ran up the length of her right forearm.

"What needs doing?" Dagonet asked, looking at her face.

Jess shook her head. "It will have to wait until we stop for the night. The cut needs to be opened, have all the infection cleaned out of it and then disinfected. We can't do it on this cart; with all the jolting we might accidentally open one of her arteries."

"I will live," Cimmeria said, waving it off.

Jess looked at her. "If we don't treat that soon, the infection will get into your blood, and then you _won't_ live."

Cimmeria shrugged again and Jess shook her head disgustedly. "Scythians,"

Dagonet grinned at her. "Get Tristan to do it when we stop tonight. At least that way she'll have someone to agree with her who will also do what he's told."

Jess shook her head again and then stood up as much as was possible in the cart, moving to squat down beside the Saxon girl, who sat looking at the scenery as they passed. "What about you? Are you injured?"

The blonde girl looked at her briefly, raised an eyebrow and then turned back to her contemplation of the English countryside.

Jess sighed and sat down next to her against the wall of the cart. "What's your name?"

The girl ignored her again and Jess laughed. "You're not a prisoner here, you know,"

"You are Romans," the frail young girl said, still looking out at the scenery.

Jess shook her head. "Arthur is a Roman. We're Sarmatians. We're foreigners here, too. We didn't save you from those priests to harm you."

The girl began to cry, her tears making tracks down her stained cheeks. "I shouldn't have needed saving," she whispered. "I dishonoured my family. My whole tribe. I can never go home again."

Jess sighed for what felt like the hundredth time that day and then put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "We all need saving some times."

The girl shook her head and bit her lip. "If I go back, my husband will kill me for bringing shame on our people. You should have left me to die with what little honour I had left to save."

"What's your name?" Jess asked again, handing the girl the wineskin full of water Dagonet had just passed her.

"Ytria," the girl said, draining the water from the skin.

"Don't worry, Ytria," Jess said, thinking about boarding. "Sometimes you spend so much time longing for home that you don't realise that where you are is where you're really meant to be."

The Saxon girl sobbed and then began to cry harder, and buried her head in Jess's shoulder. When Jess looked up, Dagonet, Galahad and Lancelot were all looking at her thoughtfully.

---------------------

They stood silently around the campfire that night, companionable but edgy. Arthur's eyes kept flicking towards the cart where all the girls were still sitting, wrapped up in some bear skin rugs they had stolen off Honorius. Eunyphore, the Greek girl, sat nursing her new son, Maechises, near the fire, and Lucan was lying near Dagonet's feet.

After a while they told Tristan about the doctoring that the Scythian girl needed and he went to procure a clean knife and some warm water to wash the cut out with. Jess, on the prompting of Galahad, talked to Eunyphore and Maechises to check that they were all right, but after that they went back to standing silently around the fire.

"We should probably get some sleep," Gawain said finally, draining the rest of their wine, which they had also stolen off Honorius.

Arthur nodded. "We'll leave the three girls in the cart with those rugs. Jessamine, you stay with them and make sure they don't do anything stupid. You'll have to keep a close eye on all of them. Dagonet, will you continue to look after the boy, please? And Galahad, the mother trusts you; stay with her tonight. The rest of us will take turns being on watch."

They all nodded and Jess moved away towards the cart.

"She'll probably need to spend the night alone, Lancelot," Arthur said, and she turned to see Lancelot giving his commander the dirtiest look she had ever seen.

She smiled at him and he looked away, embarrassed, and as she turned to keep walking back to the cart she felt her cheeks burning.

_Keira Knightley, eat your heart out_, she thought, as she climbed into the dark carriage and stepped over Ytria's sleeping form.

----------------------

Honorius' wife was still sitting in the corner. "Have you eaten?" Jess asked her, and she nodded.

"We all have,"

Jess looked at their bloodstained and filthy dresses. "Do you think you'd be able to find some other things for them to wear? The filth on their dresses probably isn't helping their overall health."

She nodded and pointed at a pile of clean, neat, folded dresses on the floor near Guinevere's head.

"Thank you," Jess said, and then looked at her. "What's your name?"

"Aemilia," she said softly.

"Well, Aemilia," Jess said, "sorry to trouble you, but, on the subject of health, we'll probably need to either splash some water over them at some stage or get them to bathe."

Aemilia nodded. "There's warm water ready in that bucket. I thought I should let the girls sleep, though."

"I think this might be a tad more important than sleeping. If they stay in that state they'll contract more infections than a whole horde of English tourists in the jungle."

The Roman woman looked at her.

"It's a Sarmatian thing," Jess said, somewhat unconvincingly, and then bent down and gently shook Guinevere awake. "Do you think you could deal with this by yourself?"

Aemilia nodded. "Where are you going?"

Jess snorted. "Hopefully to beat up your husband,"

-------------------

She was, in fact, also going to bathe, but she was going to do it in one of the shockingly cold mountain streams she knew was close by, so as to avoid attracting the attention of the Roman officers in the vicinity. The stream she was heading towards was about three minutes walk from their campsite, and she knew that all the Roman soldiers were far too lazy to end up that far from their food this late at night.

She walked through the dense undergrowth and reflected thoughtfully that leather boots did nothing towards keeping your feet warm. Neither did electrum keep you warm at all, she concluded regretfully, shifting her freezing metal shoulder plates and vowing to ask for a bearskin rug of her own when she got back to the camp.

There was the sound of trotting hoofs from behind her and Bartatua emerged from the trees, whickering a quiet greeting. She glared at him and made "back to camp" motions at him, but he just ignored her. She did have to admit, burying her cold hands in the cloth under the saddle, that he made a good windbreak. He nudged her with his cold nose and lipped at her fingers, and she laughed, concluding that she would take animal friends over human almost any day.

They reached the stream eventually, and she dipped a hand into it, thankfully discovering that it was about the same temperature as the air, and not much colder. She cast a wary look around, making sure there were no Saxon spies in the undergrowth, and then undressed hurriedly before diving into the freezing water, in order to get it over and done with. Teeth chattering, she splashed the icy water over her body for about five seconds before concluding numbly that the lack of feeling in her extremities must indicate that she was clean.

She scrambled out of the stream and stripped the water off her body in sheets before it could freeze onto her in the cold air. She pulled the leather pants and boots back on, and put her bra on, but when she reached the top she glared at it briefly and then decided it wasn't worth it; not only would she spend ages trying to get it done up and then fail, the electrum only made her colder, not a good thing.

Grabbing the top and her artillery, she swung into Bartatua's saddle and used her weapons and cloak to shield herself from the bitter wind. She nudged Bartatua into a canter and they loped back to the camp, ice cracking on the grass as they rode over the top. Thankfully, everyone was busy when she got back, and no one was even there to notice, so she rode back up to the cart where she was meant to spend the night and dumped her weapons on the ground in front of it.

-------------------

Lancelot, on the other side of the clearing, didn't hear what Jessamine asked Honorius' wife as she sat inside the cart doing something that he couldn't see with Guinevere. He did notice that she was practically topless, but after watching her back for a while, he sighed and returned to his guard duty.

His eyes were drawn back to her as she turned away from the cart holding a dress and a pair of long, soft calfskin boots and then stripped off both her long leather boots and her leather pants. His eyes widened and he looked away firmly to give her some privacy, before having his eyes drawn back to her yet again.

She climbed into the slightly-too-small dress and then bent down to pick up her cloak and wrap it around her shoulders, and as she stood up, she looked straight at him. Their eyes met for a long moment before he clenched the talisman his sister had given him firmly into his palm and then stood up and walked off.

He turned and looked back over his shoulder after a few steps, watching as she bent down to put the calfskin boots on, and wished he hadn't, because it made the knowledge that he had to spend the night without her hurt even more.

He sighed and walked on through the camp.

1 What the Ancient Greeks called themselves. Their land was called Hellas, so they called themselves the Hellenes.


	4. Chapter 4

Jess woke in the middle of the night as Guinevere slipped out of the cart, and although she was tempted to stay where she was, she sighed heavily and climbed out of her cloak and down onto the cold ground.

"Guinevere," she called softly, causing the young girl to turn in shock. "Where are you going?"

She looked down at the ground. "Merlin… my father… I have to talk to Arthur,"

Jess smiled at her and raised an eyebrow. "Just talk to him? In the middle of the night are you sure he won't think it's something else?"

Guinevere laughed. "At least that way he'll end up listening eventually,"

Jess nodded. "Don't get into any trouble,"

Guinevere smiled at her and slipped off into the darkness seeking Arthur.

Jess rubbed her hands on her now cold arms and decided to go for a quick once-over of the campsite and maybe talk to whoever was on watch at the moment – unless it was Arthur, in which case she would probably have to find someone else and tell them to take his post.

Everything was quiet, even the Romans haven drunk themselves into insensibility by now, and she saw Dagonet sleeping soundly next to Lucan, the little boy wrapped up in the big man's surcoat. She also passed Eunyphore and Maechises, miraculously sleeping, wrapped up in Galahad's cloak, and he where he had fallen asleep watching them.

She walked further on into the camp and saw Gawain, snoring against a tree, and Tristan, who she surmised was on watch, standing and looking out at the empty forest.

"There are Wodes out there," he said, pointing randomly at something in a couple of trees – she couldn't see anything – and looking at her questioningly.

"They just want to talk to Arthur, I think," Jess said, thinking about Guinevere. "I'd let them go. If they wanted to kill any of us they'd have done it already."

Tristan nodded. "I'll tell Lancelot. He's on watch."

She looked at him incredulously. "If he's on watch, what are you doing up?"

He shrugged. "What are you doing?"

She shrugged as well. "I caught Guinevere sneaking out to go and see Arthur,"

He nodded. "I'm just standing."

"_Scythians!_" she muttered to herself quietly as she followed along behind him to where Lancelot was sitting with a vantage point to the whole camp.

By the time she reached Lancelot, Tristan had already said everything and moved off, and the hungry look Lancelot gave her made her skin tingle and her stomach twitch.

She sat down beside him. "See anything interesting?"

He shrugged and pointed to where she could see Guinevere leading Arthur out into the forest. "Not much else has happened, though,"

She nodded. "How far away are the Saxons, do you know?"

He sighed. "They're camped a day's march on their part away, Tristan says. There's a huge frozen river up ahead in the pass; if we don't hurry they could cut us off there. Our objective is to get onto the river so that they can't cross either."

"And that's where we'll fight it out?" Jess asked, thinking about the movie.

Lancelot shrugged again. "Or they could offer terms,"

She laughed. "Or surrender,"

He laughed as well, and she turned to face him, not realising that they would be so close.

He leaned in to kiss her, but as soon as his lips touched hers she saw something white slip stealthily out of the cart where she had been sleeping before and she held him off to get a good look at it. She recognised that blonde hair.

"Ytria," she said softly, hauling a stricken-looking Lancelot to his feet and dragging him with her.

"Where exactly are we going?" he asked, sounding hurt.

"The Saxon girl is out there somewhere in the camp, Lancelot," she said, stopping so that they were standing close. "Not only that, practically everyone is wearing weapons and she knows how to use them, I can just tell."

He nodded reluctantly and detached himself from her. "I'll search this side of the camp, you do that one,"

She nodded, but when she turned away she nearly cried with the effort it had taken her to withstand those gorgeous brown eyes, and she felt bad for doing that to him, but she knew that Ytria was a potential threat to anyone sleeping in the camp.

She found the young, blonde girl silently unsheathing Galahad's sword, although thankfully she didn't use it on anyone in the vicinity just yet. Jess followed her to the edge of the camp and then watched her sit down on her knees and place the sword at her heart.

"Watch yourself with that knife, Ytria," she said softly. "That's sharp, you know,"

The Saxon girl began to cry and dropped the sword, which Jess then retrieved and sheathed, having picked up the empty scabbard from off Galahad's weapons as she passed them.

"You don't understand," Ytria said, tears running down her cheeks.

Jess nodded and pulled the girl to her feet, wrapping her cloak around her and escorting her back to the cart. "You're not going to do yourself any good by killing yourself, I know that,"

She dropped Galahad's sword by his sleeping form again and caught Lancelot's eye from across the camp as she hauled the young Saxon girl back into the cart. He didn't look too happy.

She looked at Ytria, who had that crazed, "just release me from this world" look on her face, and decided that she was more likely to kill herself. Much as she would have liked it to be otherwise, Jess concluded that the business with Lancelot could be resolved tomorrow, whereas Ytria mightn't _have_ a tomorrow, judging by the state she was in.

"Have you ever known what it's like to want to kill yourself?" she asked, throwing the cloak off her shoulders.

Jess laughed and sat back against the inside of the cart. "You feel like there's no way out except upwards. You feel like you could disappear and no one would care. By the time you've reached 'suicidal' you're too blind to see anything that's going on. You hate yourself for burdening people with your presence."

Ytria looked at her in shock and she laughed again, mirthlessly. "My mother killed herself after my father died, and for all I know my little brother may have done the same thing. My mother left a note."

"What happened to your brother?" Ytria asked quietly.

She shrugged. "He ran away. He'd be twelve this year, I think… if he's still alive."

Ytria tucked her knees in under her chin and sighed. "Are you married?"

Jess snorted derisively. "Me? No."

Ytria looked at her again. "But you're older than me,"

Jess nodded. "It's a religious thing, what with me being a gildatore,"

Ytria sighed. "I am… was married, before, in Saxony. But then I was stolen in one of the Roman raids."

"What raids?" Jess asked, confused.

"Honorius," Ytria said, as if stating the obvious. "He was raiding Saxon shores and stealing grain and horses and women. That's why the Saxons are invading."

Jess opened her mouth and then shut it again. Then she leapt to her feet and dragged Ytria out of the cart, hoping that Guinevere and Arthur were finished whatever it was they were doing out in the forest. She found Arthur, thankfully alone, leaning against a tree. When she called his name he sighed and then looked up at her questioningly.

"Did you know that Honorius had been raiding Saxon lands?" she asked him. "Ytria says that that's why they're invading; in revenge for all their stolen grain and horses and women."

Arthur's reaction was exactly the same as hers had been, only he leapt to his feet and grabbed his sword instead of the Saxon girl. "I'll kill him,"

She put a calming hand on his arm. "At least wait until we get back to the Wall, Arthur. When we've got our discharges, you can tell Germanius about everything and have the bastard tried for treason."

Arthur glared at her hotly for a second and then sat back down, swearing to himself. "Can't we just pretend he was killed in a battle?" he asked plaintively.

Jess laughed and shook her head. "We need Alecto alive to get our discharges and he's bound to tell the truth. So you'd just be digging our hole deeper, Arthur."

He sighed and made a face. "Well, thanks for that, anyway. You've made me, if it's at all possible, even less proud to be a Roman."

"Everything will sort itself out, Arthur," she said, and then dragged the Saxon girl back to the caravan.

"What was your husband like?" Jess asked, wrapping her cloak around herself in the chilly wind.

Ytria sighed. "He was brave, and he was kinder than most of the men in our village. He was kinder than his father, anyway; he was the chief's son. My father was honoured when the chief approached him to ask if his son could marry me."

"How old were you?"

"I was fourteen," Ytria said, shivering slightly in the wind and ignoring Jess's gesture at the bearskin rug. "He was nineteen,"

"That's a bit early to get married, isn't it?" Jess asked, frowning. "For him, I mean."

Ytria nodded. "His father didn't think much of him, so he decided that he should try to produce an heir as soon as possible."

Jess laughed. "Why couldn't the father just have another kid?"

Ytria shook her head. "Saxon law states that only the first son can inherit anything. That law was laid down by our Gods, and not even the chief can counter that."

"How long ago was it that you got married?" Jess asked.

"Ten months," the girl said, and Jess shook her head. She was only fifteen!

_My God, the Romans are messed up_, she thought to herself. _What kind of lunatics would steal a young girl married to the Saxon chief's son? No wonder they're being attacked by 'barbarians from every corner'. They keep stealing their children._

"What was his name?"

Ytria picked up the thick rug and wrapped it around herself finally, and then smiled slightly, remembering. "Cynric,"

-------------------

Jess woke the next morning to the sound of Dagonet yelling, and then hurriedly scrambled out of her cloak, grabbing her swords as she went. As an afterthought, though, when she noticed Guinevere still sleeping soundly, she also picked up her longbow and a single, black-feathered arrow.

She saw Honorius holding a knife to the young Lucan's neck and clenched her jaw in anger. Without even thinking, she walked into the clearing, raised the bow, sighted along the shaft and shot the fat Roman man in his considerable stomach. She handed Dagonet her Sarmatian sword and drew the Scytho-Median one, turning constantly in the centre of the circle, watching for the Roman soldiers to move. Lucan ran to Dagonet's leg and clung to him and one of the soldiers moved to attack them both, but Jess, acting on a command that was not her own, ducked in and slashed the man across the chest with her long, sabre-like sword.

Bors, Gawain and Tristan came loping into the clearing, swords drawn, on their horses, and Lancelot walked in with both of his swords over his shoulders.

"Is there a problem here?"

Jess glared at them all. "You either join us, or you join them," she said, motioning at Honorius and the other soldier.

The main Roman looked at the others helplessly and threw his sword on the ground. Jols came in and took their swords and they stood, looking embarrassed, to one side as Arthur came in.

He gave her a petulant look, like a child having its favourite toy taken away. "You said we weren't allowed to kill him,"

Jess laughed. "Arthur, you're somewhat older than thirty and have a Saxon army on your doorstep. Now is not the time to start acting like a child."

Tristan nodded, throwing a crossbow down onto the ground from one of the Saxon scouts he, Gawain and Bors had dispatched that morning.

"Armour-piercing," Gawain noted. "They're getting close, and they know it."

Arthur nodded. "Let's get moving,"

-------------------

At about midday they reached the frozen river. They all stood on the edge and winced as the ice groaned and creaked even when they stood still. Jess, knowing what was coming, changed into her armour and cursed the inventor of electrum, slinging all of her various weapons over her shoulders.

All the people in the coloumn that rode with them got fearfully out of the carts and spread out over the whole width of the river, trying not to put all of their weight in one place. The knights and Jessamine advanced cautiously across the frozen surface, waving the people behind them forward about twenty steps every time they checked that it was secure.

Saxon war drums broke through the frozen, silent air and all of their horses began to panic, rearing and plunging on the already unstable ice.

"Get back!" Bors shouted at the peasants and various others. "Get off the ice, or we're all done for!"

They stood on the edge of the river closest to the direction they had come from, the eight of them, holding their bows and waiting grimly as Jols set out about five dozen arrows in front of each of them. They were concentrating so hard on their impending doom that they didn't even notice all of the girls that they had rescued from Honorius turn up behind them, and Guinevere and Cimmeria take up their bows and join their line, until Jols started laying out arrows for them as well.

Jess was standing between Lancelot and Gawain, and, casting a glance at Gawain to make sure he wasn't listening too hard, she edged toward Lancelot. "Listen, Lancelot, about last night-"

He shook his head angrily. "I don't want to hear it, Jessamine,"

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, turning back to the approaching Saxon army.

He was silent for a while. "You look scared," he said finally, looking guilty.

She shrugged. "I don't like ice,"

He laughed unwillingly. "And there I was thinking that you might actually be human."

They were interrupted by the appearance of the Saxons across the other side of the river, and Jess sighed inwardly and steeled herself for the coming battle.

"You are afraid," Lancelot said softly, watching her face.

She nodded. "I don't want to die here on this godforsaken spit of land,"

"You won't," he said, keeping his eyes on the Saxons as they assembled on the other side of the river.

Ytria, her eyes wide, walked out in front of them, and then turned to look back at Jessamine.

"Get back, girl," Gawain said, horrified, but Ytria just ignored him.

"That's my husband," she said to Jess.

Jess looked at the frail young girl and then at the ice, and nodded slowly. "Go home, Ytria. Go home."

"What are you doing?" Lancelot hissed at her. "They'll think _we_ kidnapped her, and then we'll never get out of this."

"I don't think so, Lancelot," she said, watching as Ytria tremblingly crossed the ice, zigzagging to avoid the thinner patches.

The Saxon man that she recognised as the chief's son from the movie was watching wide-eyed as Ytria crossed over to them and then knelt before him, sobbing into her hands. He then pulled her to her feet and hugged her, and then said something in her ear before she cast one last look back at Jess and then started to walk around the Saxon army. Cynric looked straight at Jess for a long moment, and then called one of his archers forward, to test how close their army could get to the knights before they would come under fire.

The Saxon archer's arrow fell some seventy metres short, and Arthur snorted derisively and waved Tristan, Dagonet and Bors forward.

"They seem to be waiting for an invitation,"

The three men raised their bows and pointed them at the sky, bending them back as far as they could go.

"We're far out of range," Guinevere said, appearing at Arthur's elbow, but he just looked at her as if to say, "Oh, yeah? Watch this,"

They loosed together, Tristan firing two arrows at the same time for added leverage and power, and the four arrows whistled through the mist that was forming above them from their breath and landed in three of the Saxon front line.

Cynric glared at them and then waved his men forward. The knights, Jessamine, Arthur, Guinevere and Cimmeria all raised their bows, and the strongest three – Tristan, Bors and Dagonet – fired a couple of arrows into the flanks of the approaching army, trying to get them to cluster together on the ice so that there would be so much weight in one place the river surface would give way.

The others all joined in as the dwindling Saxons came into their respective ranges, adjusting the aim of their bows gradually as the army got closer. Jess was in shock at her archery ability; she'd done it once before on Year 8 camp and been terrible at it, but now she could fire aimlessly and still hit someone.

The clustering Saxon army started to get a bit nervous as the ice creaked under them, and tried to spread out, but Cynric shouted at them to get back into formation and they did so fearfully. They kept walking across the ice.

"It isn't going to break," Lancelot said, horrified, and they all dropped their bows and got out what swords they had with them in order to fight hand-to-hand.

Jess kept waiting for Dagonet to run forward with his axe, but he didn't.

_All bets are off_, she thought glumly, as she watched the Saxons finally get within their archers' range. Now they were actually going to have to fight it out.

-------------------

Kelermes watched the approaching Saxon army with contempt. _What a useless bunch of barbarians_, she thought to herself. Then she noticed, through Jess's eyes, the heavy battleaxe lying with Dagonet's discarded bow, and grinned.

--------------------

Jess felt herself shoved aside by something, and turned to see who had pushed her, without noticing that her body had moved off on her. She looked down at her feet, and then at her hands, and then at her body, which had just grabbed Dagonet's axe and sprinted into the midground between the Saxons and the rest of the knights, swinging the axe high above her head and slamming it into the ice.

She felt better about being – as it were – disembodied when she got to watch Lancelot scream "Get back here!" worriedly in person, but it was still a really weird sensation. Then she noticed Cimmeria and Guinevere grab a big, round shield and run forward with it to shield her body from the Saxon archers, standing in front of her.

Another two or three swings, and Guinevere and Cimmeria would be swimming, Jess knew, because whatever was using her body didn't look like it was about to give up on annihilating the Saxons just for the sake of two girls' lives. She looked at Arthur's face and then made up her mind. She ran across the ice and then stopped, trying to figure out how to get back into her body.

She opted for the same strategy whatever was in there at the moment had used and took a bit of a run up before shoving hard on her own back. The heavy thud of the metal-laden black-haired vampire-looking woman that catapulted out of her body was enough to nearly break the ice itself, and Jess suddenly found herself holding an incredibly heavy axe very high over her head.

"Get out of the way!" she screamed at Guinevere and Cimmeria, and the girls took one look at her face and dashed off to where the knights were standing.

She summoned all of her rather disappointing strength and hurled the axe at the ice. It broke through with a sickening crunching sound, and she was so exhausted from swinging the axe once that she stumbled back just in time to escape the cracking river. The clustered flanks of the Saxons all sank into the ice, and the whole army backed away, but there were still a few arrows in the air from their last round of fire.

Standing up just at the wrong moment, Jess caught three of these, one in her left shoulder, one in the stomach and one in the right thigh, and the speed of their combined impacts carried her stumbling backwards before someone grabbed her and swung her into their arms, carrying her back behind the danger zone of the rapidly disintegrating ice.

Lancelot, who she discovered was the one who had carried her, set her on the ground and she immediately tried to walk over to her bow, but found that she couldn't put any weight on her right leg. Lancelot grabbed her, concerned, but she shook him off and then limped determinedly over to her bow, picked it up, and fired spitefully at the only remaining archer in the Saxon army.

It spiraled straight across the expanse of water and the archer went down. She saw Cynric incline his head at her, and turned away, whistling for Bartatua.

Arthur looked at her concernedly. "We need to get as far away from here as possible, Jessamine,"

She nodded. "That's why we're going to start riding now."

Bartatua came over and she silently cursed whoever had decided you mounted with your left leg instead of your right. She held tightly onto the pommel of the saddle with her right hand so as to not let her right leg collapse under her when she put all of her weight on it and then, using the same arm and her left leg in the stirrup as leverage, swung awkwardly into the saddle, having to use all of her many years of ballet to allow her to turn her right leg out far enough that the arrow didn't poke into the saddle.

Wincing anyway, she wrapped her left arm around her stomach and held the reins only in her right hand, sitting impatiently as the others mounted up as well. Cimmeria ended up riding pillion with Tristan, and Arthur took Guinevere in front of him on Palagius, while Galahad looked after Eunyphore and Maechises and Dagonet had Lucan riding with him.

She took one last look back at the Saxons and saw Cynric hugging Ytria again, and smiled slightly, thinking that at least one good thing had come out of all this.

-------------------

By sundown, Jess was so sore she had gone numb in several places that she actually needed for riding, so she kept nearly falling off onto Lancelot and Gawain, who rode on either side of her the whole way.

After about Lancelot's tenth near miss of catching her, he shook his head and exchanged an exasperated look with Gawain. "Arthur, we really need to stop,"

The knights in front of them looked at the dull, painful expression on Jess's face and then decided rather abruptly it was probably time to camp for the night.

She sat Bartatua for a minute or so before wearily, painstakingly swinging her right leg over the front of the saddle so that she didn't scrape what was left of the arrow (she had broken some of it off to make riding easier) on anything. She then sat and looked in horror at the long drop to the ground before Lancelot came over and held his arms up to her.

She sighed and then let him lift her down, and when her leg collapsed under her again he lifted her into his arms and carried her over to a bedroll – which she assumed vaguely was his – where he lay her down and disappeared for a short amount of time which in her pain was stretched out to about fifteen minutes. He came back holding a wineskin and handed it to her. She sniffed it suspiciously but her sense of smell was nearly completely atrophied with all the pain.

"It's water," he said, quietly, and she sighed gratefully and drank some of it.1

He took hold of the shoulder plate of her armour that had nearly stopped the arrow from hitting her and moved it sideways a little bit, stopping as she moaned in pain. "I need to get a look at the wound,"

She nodded and clenched her fists and jaw as he moved it again, this time gasping as he took hold of the arrow.

"It has to come out," he said, but in a tone of voice that was asking her permission.

She took a deep breath and then nodded. "Just do it,"

He waved at Cimmeria, who came over holding some material that had been torn into strips and a bowl of water that had been warmed on the fire. Jess looked up and saw Arthur being tended by Guinevere for an arrow wound in the neck and grinned at Lancelot, who nodded conspiratorially back, and then, while she was distracted, pulled a good two inches of the arrow out.

The arrowhead hurt the most to pull out and she bit her lip so hard as he did the first one that she was bleeding from there, too. Once it was out, he showed her the length of the bloodstain on the shaft of the arrow to indicate how far it had been inside of her. He then poured some of the warm water over her arm, causing it to sting, and wrapped one of the strips of cloth around it as a bandage, doing three to stem all of the bleeding.

"Can you move your arm?" he asked her, and she gave it an experimental wave.

"It hurts," she said, wincing.

He nodded. "But at least the arrow hasn't torn any of your muscles,"

She snorted. "What muscles?"

He laughed, and then looked at the arrow in her stomach. "This one will hurt more."

She sighed. "Oh, wonderful,"

He nodded sympathetically. "I'll have to go slow with this one, too, so as not to risk damaging any of your internal organs when I pull it out."

He broke the top twenty or so centimetres off it and then maneuvered her leather shirt over the jagged stump of the arrow shaft, pulling the shirt off the arrow. He then painstakingly pulled the bloodstained arrow out of her, taking care not to rip anything inside her stomach. Afterwards he struggled to get the bandage round her whole abdomen with the top on, so she sat up uncomfortably, reached around with her right hand and undid the strings, pulling the top off over her head.

By the time Lancelot had gotten those bandages on, Arthur had been looked after, and came over to kneel beside Lancelot.

"How is she?" he asked, concerned.

Jess laughed. "I think I'll live."

He nodded. "Are you hungry?"

She made a face. "I may be later,"

He smiled at her. "I'll make you something and keep it in the coals so it stays hot."

"Thank you," she said, and then winced as she lay back down.

Lancelot was looking uncomfortably at the arrow in her thigh, and she realised that he had to pull her leather pants off the shaft like he had done with the one in her stomach. She sat up again and undid her belt clumsily from her numb left fingers and lay it to one side, and then slid the leather pants down over her hips so that there was enough slack to pull them off the blue-feathered arrow2.

It was the most painful of all three of them, and Jess suspected that the arrowhead might have been scraping against her thighbone. Whatever the cause, though, she started to cry while he was pulling it out and she could hardly breathe even when it was gone and Lancelot was just pouring warm water over the wound. That injury also duly bandaged, she sat up stiffly and then couldn't manage to pull her pants back over the arrow wound.

"I'll go and get your dress," Lancelot said, standing up and moving away.

She slid her freezing leather boots off and laid them next to her belt, hoping that he would bring her calfskin boots as well. "Bloody hell,"

He reappeared, holding the dress, just as she was easing out of the long, clammy leather pants, and handed her the warm blue garment. "I brought your other boots, too,"

She smiled her thanks at him and then struggled into everything, eventually having to get Lancelot to hand her the black cloak that was still attached to her shoulder plates.

She lay back on the bedroll and then realised that it was his, sitting up again. "I should probably move,"

He shook his head and stopped her from standing up. "It's alright. Just stay there. Do you want any of that food?"

She shook her head weakly, feeling too tired to eat anything. "I don't think so,"

He nodded and put his hand on her forehead, evidently feeling for a fever. "I'll tell Arthur,"

He walked towards the campfire where all of the knights and various others were eating in silence. "She's not hungry," he said, looking back over his shoulder at her.

"Is she okay?" Guinevere asked anxiously.

Lancelot nodded wearily. "But it's a hard day's ride back to the Wall tomorrow which she won't be able to make riding by herself."

Arthur nodded thoughtfully. "She can ride with you, then,"

Lancelot nodded again. "She doesn't have a fever, so I think it's just a reaction to the pain. The arrow in her leg was right alongside her thighbone."

"Did they damage any of her muscles?" Arthur asked.

Lancelot shook his head. "Thankfully, it doesn't look like they did. She can still move everything, anyway. I was just wondering if I could borrow another cloak for her because it looks like it's going to be fairly cold tonight."

Arthur nodded and handed him his long red one. "She needs it more than I do,"

"How is it?" Lancelot asked, motioning at Arthur's neck.

Arthur shrugged. "I'll survive,"

"You sound like a Scythian, Arthur," Bors said, and they all laughed.

When Lancelot went back to check on Jessamine about two minutes later, she was asleep, so he laid the red cloak over her gently and then walked back to the campfire.

1 You can guess what she was afraid it would be.

2 Hooray for underwear!


	5. Chapter 5

Later that night, when the branch of the Saxon army that had attempted to cut the Sarmatians off on their escape to the east had rejoined the rest of the Saxon troops at Honorius' estate, Cynric lay beside Ytria in his bed and wondered how to tell his father about her.

He knew that the punishment she would receive for treason by letting herself get captured was death, and that it was more in revenge for the stolen grain and horses than women that they were here. He also knew that his father would eventually find out at some stage, and if he left it too long to tell him he risked facing the charge of treason himself.

He sighed and rolled over onto his back, thinking. She rolled over as well, turning to face him, and he reached out and put his arm around her, pulling her in close to him.

"What's wrong?" she asked him quietly, sliding a hand across his bare chest.

He just sighed again and brushed a strand of her hair out of her face.

"You're thinking about what's going to happen to me, aren't you?" she said sadly, resting her chin on his shoulder.

"I won't let them kill you, Ytria. You know that."

She laughed softly. "Even you can't counter the laws laid down by the Gods, Cynric. I have to be punished for bringing dishonour on my family and my tribe and our people."

He shook his head. "It wasn't even your fault. I should have been there to protect you."

She sighed and laid her head on his chest. "There's nothing we can do about it now."

"Who were those people you were with?" he asked her curiously.

She laughed. "Arthur Castus and his Sarmatian knights. They saved me from the Romans."

"So it wasn't them that captured you?"

She shook her head. "The man who conducted all the raids was a nobleman named Marius Honorius. The knights killed him early this morning."

"How did they rescue you?"

She shuddered. "I was… the Christian priests locked me in a room with about twenty other girls… and left us to die because we were sinners, they said. Some of the girls… the girl next to me… they went mad with hunger and started eating themselves… their clothes, their hair. We were all chained down, or they would have been eating each other, too."

She started to cry and he drew her into his arms, horrified. He held her for a while, until she had cried herself out. He then searched for something to ask her, trying to change the subject. "Who was that woman that cracked the river this morning?"

She sniffed. "That's Jessamine. She's a Sarmatian gildatore. The Scythian girl they had with them told me a bit about the gildatorae – they're female warriors who carry a part of the Sarmatians' war god inside of them. I hope she's all right. It was her that first discovered the room I was locked in. Without her, I wouldn't even be here."

"A female warrior?" he asked incredulously.

She laughed and nodded. "The Sarmatians aren't as traditional about that sort of thing as we are."

He raised his eyebrows. "Obviously,"

She began to cry again. "Oh, Cynric, I don't want to die here. I don't want to die."

He held her close to him, hating his father and their stupid laws with every fibre of his being. "I won't let them kill you. I promise I won't let you die."

-----------------------------------

Fulwood sat in her dorm, leafing desperately through the piles of paper and other crap on her desk, looking for her ancient history assignment. She had been thinking about what had happened to Jess, and had realised the date that it had been when she had disappeared.

31st October. Not only was it Halloween, to the Celts it had been a special ceremonial day where they celebrated something, but she couldn't remember what, or which day it was.

She found the assignment and flipped through the pages, trying to find the section on _Religious Beliefs and Practices of the Ancient British Celts_.

"Oh, of course," she breathed to herself as she read over the list and the properties of the day involved.

Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival marking the beginning of winter and also the beginning of their New Year, was the time when the veil between their world and the surrounding worlds was supposed to be the thinnest. It was the night when the door between life and death stood open, and likewise the day when the Summer King and the King of Winter concluded their epic duel with the triumph of the Winter King for another six months.

Not only that, scientists had done some extensive research on the solar winds in the past few days and discovered that they were the sun's way of releasing pent-up energy, a phenomenon that occurred approximately every 1500 years for the whole of the solar year1.

The telephone companies' satellites were still up in space because they weren't able to move them through the windstorm, but the companies had all issued a decree stating that the use of mobile phones during the period of solar wind activity was dangerous and irresponsible, and the boarding house had then gone and confiscated all of the boarders' phones.

They being used to this, though, each girl had two; one that she pretended to hand in every morning (so they couldn't use it at school) and one that they actually used all day and practically all night as well.

Fulwood thought about all of this and then looked out the window, checking for thunderclouds. As Pascoe and Campbell came in and began complaining about their end of year exams, she began to formulate a plan.

--------------------------

Jess woke up as the sun was rising and looked in confusion at the long red cloak she was wrapped in. She then sat up stiffly and gasped as the pain from her wounds flooded back, having taken a holiday while she was asleep. Bartatua pricked up his ears from where he was grazing nearby and walked over to her, nudging her inquiringly. Fortunately, it was her right shoulder that he nudged, and not the one with the arrow in it.

"You're up early," a voice said behind her, and she turned to see Lancelot walking towards her, with a sword on each shoulder and wearing only his leather pants.

She laughed. "So are you. And by the looks of things, you've already been busy for a while. What were you doing?"

He shrugged and swung his swords down, leaning them against a tree. "I felt the need to brush up on my sword-handling skills,"

She grinned at him. "Meaning you felt the need to hit something,"

He laughed. "Maybe,"

He sat down beside her and pulled a tunic on over his head. "How're all those wounds?"

She grimaced and leaned back against the tree behind her. "I'm hoping if I keep still enough they won't realise I'm here."

He laughed again. "Arthur says you have to ride with me today,"

She sighed. "I was expecting there to be some such decree,"

He shook his head. "What were you thinking, running out there all by yourself, anyway?"

She shrugged. "I guess I figured that it would be easier than battling them all,"

He looked at her. "You had us all worried,"

She laughed. "Yeah, I heard you all yelling after me. I must say, I'm flattered that you all care that much about me,"

"Sorry I was a bit short with you yesterday," he said, looking down at the ground.

She shook her head. "You more than made up for it last night by looking after me the way you did,"

"In that case, then, you owe me," he said, moving over and pushing her around the trunk of the tree she was leaning against. "Let me share that back rest."

She laughed, falling off the tree. "You can have the whole thing if you want, so long as I can lean on you."

"Deal," he said, grinning, and then grabbed her and hauled her over so that she was sitting in his lap.

"You're such a little kid," she said, laughing, as she hit him and tried to get away.

"Who's the one hitting people to get what she wants?" he asked, amused, and then pulled her back down to lie against him. "If you keep that up you'll injure yourself again."

She laughed and relaxed a little bit. "So what are your plans for going home, Lancelot?"

He shrugged. "See my family, I guess. Apart from that I don't know. But anything's going to better than being here on this bloody island with every hostile tribe of barbarians in the whole of the Roman Empire."

She snorted. "Amen to that,"

He laughed and let down his guard a little bit, and she managed to crawl about a metre away before he caught her, tipped her over onto her back and then kissed her.

Unfortunately, though, Bartatua thought this was very interesting, and came over to investigate, nudging Lancelot in various places from his head to his chest in an attempt to find out what was going on. Eventually, Lancelot came up for air and made shooing motions at the big black horse, who just snorted and then kept trying to eat various parts of Lancelot's clothing, which caused Jess to start laughing. Lancelot then grabbed hold of Bartatua's nose and pushed him away, at which the black stallion let out an ear-piercingly shrill whinny and loped off over the other side of the clearing.

Unfortunately, this also woke everyone else in the camp.

Lancelot sighed and looked down at her. "I knew that horse was evil,"

She began to laugh again, and after a while he glared at her and moved away, but he was grinning as he did so.

-------------------------------

Kelermes was sulking. Not only had she been hoisted out of the body she had gone to so much trouble to find just as she was about to wreak major havoc and destruction, she seemed to be floating in some kind of icy water. Bodies floated around her, but they were all male, and Saxon. She couldn't have used any of them even if she had wanted to. She sighed and started floating towards where she could feel the distant tug of the tides on the shore, thinking that the river would eventually have to melt somewhere towards the sea.

_One day I'll kill everything that threatens the Sarmatian way of life_, she thought to herself furiously. _One day_.

------------------------------

Their horses were exhausted by the time they stopped at midday, most of them carrying two people over the rough territory to the north of the Wall. Jess suggested mildly that if they were going to insist on not letting her ride by herself, perhaps she and Lancelot should switch to Bartatua, and, after looking once at the labouring Api, Lancelot agreed.

Guinevere and Arthur were talking quietly on the far side of the clearing, and Jess grinned at Lancelot as he lifted her down from Palagius' saddle, as Lancelot had done for her. Lancelot smiled and handed her some of the bread that was apparently all they were eating for lunch. She took it and sighed, thinking that she couldn't wait until the sandwich was invented.

Arthur came over and stifled a grin as she chewed dispiritedly through the soggy bread. "We're going to stay here for the night to give the horses the rest they need. We're far enough away from the Saxons to ease off the pace a bit, I think."

Lancelot nodded. "I'll go and water the horses, then,"

Jess sighed and limped across to where Cimmeria and Guinevere were now seated, divided the rest of her uneaten bread in half and through one half to each girl, sitting down carefully in between them. Guinevere smiled and handed Jess the apple Arthur had given her. She raised an eyebrow.

"How did you manage to wrangle this, Guinevere?"

She laughed. "Animal magnetism,"

Jess shook her head and took a bite, thinking how strange it was that she had hated Guinevere in the movie for what she had done to Lancelot, but now, knowing her, she was just an ordinary teenage girl the same as any of her friends – albeit with some rather different problems, like wars instead of exams. "Are you sure you're not just the cook's favourite?"

Cimmeria laughed and shook her head. "It's bribery, so that she'll keep sleeping with him,"

Jess noticed Arthur looking at them suspiciously and began to laugh, and soon all three of them were involved in a giggle-fest the likes of which she hadn't seen since their Carols Service back in 2007, when a very devoted man had stood up and sung loudly off-key and behind time to "O Come All Ye Faithful".

Lancelot shook his head at them as he walked past. "Women,"

She stopped laughing and raised an eyebrow archly. "Oh, come on, you know you can't live without us,"

He laughed. "Oh, really?"

She nodded. "You see, one of the major differences between men and women is that women can live without sex. Men can't."

Lancelot stared at her, his mouth open, for a second, and then swore and walked away. Cimmeria and Guinevere both recommenced giggling as Jess punched the air triumphantly – with her good arm – and took another bite of the apple.

"Got him. Right where it hurts, too, by the looks of it," Cimmeria said, leaning back against the rock they were sitting in front of.

Jess laughed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Guinevere snorted. "Oh, come on,"

Cimmeria nodded. "Yeah, we've seen the way you two tiptoe around each other,"

"You're almost as obvious as Cimmeria and tall and silent over there," Guinevere said, chewing on the bread Jess had given her.

"Stop calling him that," Cimmeria said irritably. "His name is Tristan."

"You wouldn't know it, though," Eunyphore said, coming over to sit beside them. "I mean, you practically have to drag every word out of him. I asked him how far we were from the wall before and he just shrugged."

"Maybe he didn't know," Cimmeria said defensively.

Jess laughed. "No offence, Cimmeria, but Tristan knows. He and Arthur are talking about it now,"

Cimmeria sighed. "Fine, so he doesn't talk much. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

The men stood in a small clump on the other side of the clearing looking wary.

"Is Jessamine okay?" Gawain asked Lancelot quietly, looking at them all gossiping madly.

Lancelot shook his head. "She must be delirious from the pain, or something,"

"Who do you think they're talking about?" Bors asked suddenly, and they all looked at each other and then tried to edge closer.

"Oh, God," Arthur said quietly as Guinevere began to talk animatedly, gesticulating wildly. "I think she's talking about me,"

Galahad looked at some of her hand gestures. "I hope not,"

Tristan was trying to lip read something Eunyphore was saying, but nothing that he came up with made any sense. "I think they're talking about Maechises, at the moment," he said uncertainly.

Dagonet grimaced and then knelt down to talk to Lucan. "This is probably the highest form of evil in the known world," he said, pointing at all the girls. "It is called _gossiping_. It is advised that you never engage in this yourself."

Lucan nodded solemnly. "It does look a bit scary,"

"Don't worry, son," Bors said, sounding worried. "We'll protect you,"

The knights clustered into an even tighter clump, and Gawain shuddered. "Any minute now they're going to start talking about their hair. I can just feel it."

They stayed in their little group, clustered fearfully on the outskirts of the clearing, for much of the rest of the day.

-----------------------------

Cynric stood in the middle of his father's tent, watching the man himself pace angrily back and forth in front of him.

"Let me get this straight," he said menacingly, stopping right in front of his son. "You want me to circumvent the laws laid down by our Gods regarding treason for your little wife just because you believe that she doesn't deserve to die."

"She doesn't," Cynric said, not meeting his father's gaze.

"She betrayed our people!" Cerdic shouted, getting right in Cynric's face.

"It wasn't her fault!" Cynric shouted back. "It was my fault! I should have been there to protect her!"

Cerdic backed off and raised an eyebrow. "Is that so? You want me to kill you in her place? Because I will, if you keep this up,"

Cynric closed his eyes for a brief, furious moment and then opened them again, clenching his fists and his jaw. "Yes,"

Cerdic moved a bit closer, looking confused. "What did you say?"

"I said yes!" Cynric shouted, grabbing his father by the front of his furs. "All my life you've told me I was worth nothing! But she is worth something! And the loss of nothing is better than the loss of something, so kill me instead of her! She doesn't deserve to die. Not after everything she's been through."

His father nodded and waved his men-at-arms in from outside. "So be it. You die at midnight."

Cynric sighed and stood still as the men-at-arms tied his wrists behind his back and hustled him out of his father's tent towards where they were keeping what few prisoners they had taken.

They ran into Ytria outside where she was waiting, in tears, obviously having heard their shouted conversation. "Don't do this, Cynric," she said, but the guards pulled him away before he could reply.

Cerdic turned to one of the remaining guards around his tent. "As soon as he's gone, kill her, too,"

The guard nodded and Ytria burst into sobs, falling to the ground in helpless despair.

---------------------------------

By the time the sun was setting, Jess had limped off to the inevitably freezing river to go and wash out her arrow wounds and apply some new bandages. The one in her thigh had bled the least but hurt the most, and she suspected that a bruise would start to show up there sometime soon. Thankfully, none of them seemed to be showing any signs of infection, so she rinsed the bloodstains off and then did the new bandages. The one on her shoulder ached in the cold, and the one in her stomach just hurt, but apart from that she was pretty much okay.

She didn't realise that Lancelot had followed her down until he came and sat beside her after she had pulled her dress back down from her stomach and tucked her knees up under her chin.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked her, quietly.

She sighed, and opted for the truth. "You,"

He laughed. "So, Jessamine, you've been to bed with Galahad, Gawain, Arthur and Tristan. How does a man go about convincing you to go to bed with him?"

She smiled at him. "Well, if you're asking me what you've been doing wrong, you always get me too drunk, for starters."

"And what else?" he asked her, grinning.

She sighed. "You're just too likeable. So I can't sleep with you because then I'll start thinking about our future," she shuddered. "Whereas with the others, it's just like…" she sighed again. "Do you know what I mean?"

He was silent for a while. "What would you say if I told you that right now, from where I'm sitting, a future with you doesn't look too bad?"

She laughed. "I guess I'd have to check if you were serious,"

He nodded and then moved closer to her, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. "Have you had anything to drink tonight?"

She shook her head. "Nothing,"

He nodded again. "Good,"

He leaned in and kissed her, and, thankfully, this time all the horses were tethered.

1 How the scientists actually figured this out is still a mystery, but it probably has something to do with quantum.


	6. Chapter 6

Cynric knelt in the tent containing the prisoners, his arms tied behind his back, the fresh whip scars on his back stinging in the cold air. He wondered numbly what time it was, trying to get a look at the moon through the tent canvas, but couldn't tell. He could see the silhouettes of the guards out the front of the tent, and the vague outline of his father's horse, Pazyric, grazing next to a nearby copse of trees.

There was a soft, stealthy sound from near the back of the tent and then Cynric heard the canvas being cut open with a knife. He turned around to see who it was, narrowing his eyes in the dim light, and sighed in relief when he discovered that it was Ytria.

She knelt in front of him and then threw her arms around his neck, and he could feel the tears on her face against his shoulder.

"You shouldn't be here," he said to her softly.

She shook her head. "Neither should you. Which is why we're both leaving,"

He looked at her in shock. "Leaving? But… we can't."

She sniffed as she sliced the ropes that were knotted around his wrists. "We have to. It's the only thing we can do,"

"But… we are Saxons. This is where we belong," he said, and then thought about it.

She kissed him and then sat back on her haunches, tears streaming down her face. "Sometimes you spend so much time thinking that you should be somewhere that you don't realise that you belong somewhere else."

He nodded and then hugged her. "Where do we go from here?"

She stood up and led him cautiously out of the tent, checking to make sure that no one was watching. To his surprise, she led him to Pazyric, and he shook his head emphatically.

"If we're going to catch Arthur's coloumn before they reach the wall we're going to need a horse," she said, not meeting his eyes.

"Arthur?" he asked her incredulously. "They won't let us near them!"

She nodded. "They will. I know they will. Or at the very least, Jessamine will try."

He looked at her for a long time and then nodded. "I hope you're right,"

They both mounted and then he looked up at the moon, noticing that it was only a short time before midnight. He directed Pazyric into the stand of trees, and then, when they were blessedly out of earshot and scouting distance of the camp, they began to gallop, and Cynric reflected as they flew over the rocky terrain that he had never felt more free in his entire life.

----------------------------

Dawn was just staining the sky with the usual pinks and golds and Jess sat with her back against a tree, doing her watch duty, when she heard the sound of galloping hooves coming from the northeast. It was very impressive that she actually knew that it was the northeast because normally she wouldn't have been able to find north with several compasses, but the sun rises in the east and she knew that they were travelling south to the Wall, so she actually managed to deduce the direction of the rider's approach to whisper in the knights' ears as she woke them and handed them their swords.

She and Tristan, the quickest of the risers, crouched in the undergrowth beside the caravan trail to get a good look at the rider to see if they were going to be a threat. They could tell, even from a distance, that whatever horse they were riding was dying under them.

"It's a woman," she said quietly to Tristan.

He shrugged. "One of them is,"

"Know anything?" Arthur asked, appearing beside them.

Tristan shrugged again. "Not much. There's a man and a woman, so they may be escaping from something. Or he may have kidnapped her."

Jess sighed and shook her head as the riders came into view and she saw who it was that was riding the horse. "Whatever they're doing, they're not going to be a threat. That's Ytria,"

Arthur looked at her. "Are you sure? Even if it is her, the man with her was the leader of the Saxons."

She shook her head again and stood up. "He's the leader's son, not the leader."

She stepped onto the road and flagged them down, and was relieved to see as they got closer that she wasn't about to get them all killed; Ytria's husband wasn't even wearing a sword and he looked barely fit to ride, let alone fight.

They halted about five metres away and then Cynric dismounted, and she exchanged a horrified look with Cimmeria, who had materialised in between her and Tristan, when she saw that his shirt was stuck to his back with blood, some of it black, indicating an infection. He helped Ytria down from the exhausted horse and then looked around at them all uncomfortably.

Ytria stepped forward and knelt, head bowed, in front of Arthur. "You have already saved my life once,"

Arthur looked at Jess and then suspiciously at Cynric. "You want us to do so again?"

Ytria nodded. "My husband and I both face death if we are found by our people," she said, and her voice shook a little as she neared the end of the sentence.

Arthur turned to Jols. "Can any of the stores on the pack horse be moved to your horse?"

He nodded. "Almost all of them, I'd say. We don't have much left."

Arthur nodded as well and then pulled Ytria to her feet. "All right. But you'll have to leave that horse here. We'll be moving too fast for it to stay with us."

Cynric bowed his head. "Thank you,"

Arthur shrugged. "Have you eaten?"

---------------------------

They sat around the campfire eating what remained of their meagre stores and, in the case of Jess, Guinevere, Eunyphore, Ytria and Cynric, trying to avoid drinking koumiss. Their horses looking a lot more energetic after their nearly half-day rest yesterday, they decided that they would leave straight after they had eaten.

"You're going to need to take a look at his back," Jess said to Ytria as they sat watching Cynric sit stiffly about a metre away.

"At the moment, I'm trying not to," the young girl replied.

"How far away are we?" Eunyphore asked Galahad across the fire.

He shrugged and looked at Tristan. "Two hours, maybe three if it rains."

Gawain looked at him. "This is Britannia we're talking about. Not only is it almost certain that it will rain, the stuff is so thick it would more likely take us four hours,"

"You can tell we've been riding for a long time," Lancelot said, sitting down beside her, "when Galahad and Gawain start fighting about the weather."

She laughed. "And if we're all about to kill each other, Dagonet and Bors would be fighting?"

He nodded. "Something like that,"

She shrugged. "I would have said that you could tell we'd been riding for a long time when Arthur stops complaining about having to cook, and that we're all going to kill each other when Galahad and Gawain start fighting about the weather."

He laughed. "Both work,"

She sighed. "Three hours,"

"Or four, according to Gawain."

She shook her head. "Galahad said two first. I took an average."

"Three hours and then we'll all be free," he said, looking off into the distance.

She nodded. "Back to Sarmatia,"

He was silent for a while. "Where does your clan live?"

She hurriedly tried to recall a place somewhere in ancient Europe that she remembered the Sarmatians had lived in. "Um… down near the Caucasus mountains, mostly."

He seemed not to notice her hesitation, or the inclusion of her 'um', but merely sighed. "My clan lives between the Danube River and the Carpathian mountains."

Her limited memory for ancient geography failed her and she was forced to rely on modern geography, recalling that the Danube was somewhere in northeastern Europe, and the Caucasus mountains were actually in Asia, west of Turkey.

"That's a long way," she said finally, more than a bit regretfully.

He nodded. "Five weeks journey,"

Before she had time to ask him how he knew all the distances off by heart, Arthur came over and informed them that it was time to leave.

"Are you going to ride on your own today?" Lancelot asked her.

She shrugged. "I could. But I probably shouldn't."

He nodded. "May I offer you the services of my horse?"

She laughed at him. "As you wish, my lord,"

-----------------------------

The ride was blessedly quite short and the going fairly smooth, even though it did drizzle a little bit, much to the annoyance of both Galahad and Gawain, and it seemed like a lot less than three hours when they caught up with their coloumn of peasants about a kilometre out from the gates into the southern half of Britannia.

The girls – including her, much to Jess's annoyance – and Cynric were transferred back into their cart when they caught up with the caravan, and Jess, Cimmeria, Guinevere and Eunyphore sat idly against one of the walls as Ytria tended to Cynric's scary wounds.

"Who's Palagius?" Guinevere asked curiously after a while.

Jess sighed. "Arthur's mentor. He was lecturing on freedom and the equality of man in Rome before he was excommunicated and killed by the Church."

Guinevere sat back against the cart. "No wonder Arthur's so upset,"

Eunyphore looked at her confusedly. "Why?"

"Because he only found out the day before yesterday," Guinevere said sadly. "And he thought that he would be able to see Palagius again when he got back to Rome."

"Not only that, he mentioned Palagius to the Bishop who's back at Hadrian's Wall a while ago in terms of future meetings and the Bishop said nothing," Jess added. "And it also puts into question all his beliefs about the righteousness of Rome."

Cimmeria snorted. "It's about time,"

Jess shrugged. "Well, I mean, Sarmatians drink too much and Scythians are somewhat beyond suicidal, but its nothing that you question, is it? It's how you were brought up to be so you think it's the way things are meant to be. You never stop to think that there might be something else out there."

"We're not that suicidal," Cimmeria said defensively.

The others all laughed. "Trust me, Cimmeria, you are," Guinevere said, grinning.

They heard the gates creak ponderously open and then heard the cheers of what few townspeople remained in the settlement just beyond the gate. Jess noticed Bartatua tethered to a cart that was just behind them and decided she wasn't going to keep sitting with the rest of the rather unfairly labeled invalids, and as she slipped off the back of the cart she waved to them, receiving a few glares in return.

She untied the knot that tethered Bartatua's reins to the back of the cart and then pulled him off the road to mount so that she wouldn't hold up traffic. Then she spotted the knights riding near the front of the coloumn and cantered forward to meet them, passing several carts and a lot of scared-looking peasants.

"Don't you ever do what you're told?" Lancelot asked her amusedly, as she drew level.

She shrugged. "You didn't seriously think I was going to miss the triumphant entrance, did you?"

He laughed. "How's the leg?"

She shrugged again. "It doesn't actually hurt all that much. I probably could have made this morning on my own."

He looked at her. "I'm glad you decided not to,"

She couldn't actually think of anything to say to that, but was saved of having to fumble through an awkward pause by Arthur's coming up on her other side.

"Don't you ever do what you're told?"

She laughed. "That's exactly what Lancelot said,"

Lancelot shrugged. "Great minds think alike,"

"I appreciate the compliment," Arthur said, grinning. "Although I fear you may be raising yourself a little too high."

Jess shook her head. "You can tell we're nearly home when people start insulting each other."

"Are you still going to go back to Rome, Arthur?" Lancelot asked good-naturedly, waving off the slight on his intelligence.

Arthur's face grew sombre. "I don't know, Lancelot. I really don't know."

As he said that they rode through the gates, and they assembled in the courtyard that held their stables, the carts that held Alecto and his mother and the girls the only two that followed them towards the barracks. Bishop Germanius came, praising God at the top of his lungs, into the courtyard as they dismounted, followed by a rather harried-looking squad of Roman legionnaires who seemed to be arguing over where they had last seen the chest containing the discharge papers.

"No, I swear! _You_ had it last!"

"No, I gave it to you!"

"Good Jesus! By the grace of God, you have returned!" Germanius exclaimed, walking towards them. "You are free now!"

He waved at the soldiers, who looked uncomfortably at each other and then at him and then shrugged. Thankfully, a centurion walked past them holding the box and opened it, standing beside the Bishop.

"See? I _told_ you I didn't have it!" one of the soldiers whispered furiously at one of the others.

Arthur shook his head and walked up to Germanius, who, by now, was beginning to detect a slight lowering of the temperature in the courtyard. "Bishop Germanius," he said, his voice dripping with hatred. "Friend of my father."

Lancelot walked over to the box and pulled the six papers out of their holdings, handing them to each of the knights, and, although they were met with a rather less gloomy reception than in the movie, Dagonet being there this time, the atmosphere was still icy, the knights obviously still not happy about their final mission. Jessamine looked questioningly at the Bishop, wondering if she was going to be expected to stay in Britain, and he sighed and produced another scroll from his robe.

"We had another paper drawn up,"

She took it they all walked out of the courtyard, with the exception of Tristan, who walked over to the soldier holding the box, assessed its monetary value and then walked off with it, leaving the shocked Centurion standing in the middle of the stables, Bishop Germanius beside him.

"Shall I get it off him, sir?" he asked confusedly.

The Bishop shook his head. "Rome will have no more to do with these barbarians. Just let him keep it."

--------------------------

By lunchtime, they were seated around a big table in what could by rough standards be called a bar; at least, there was a barmaid and there were drinks, so it was probably the closest thing. Vanora came over holding a jug of wine, shouting to be heard over the carousing and singing and laughter. It was amazing what an amount of noise seven people could make, she thought amusedly, as she reached across to get a refill.

Gawain got out a knife and drew a rough map of Europe on the table, drawing a big X on the places where she surmised they all came from. He looked up at her.

"So, where does your clan come from?"

"Down near the Caucasus mountains," she said, grinning. "I think you're going to have to make the map bigger."

He grunted and did so, drawing Caucasia in. "Right. So we drop Tristan east of the Pindus Mountains, then head north to lose Lancelot near the Carpathian Mountains." He labouriously drew a line between the two places and then looked inquiringly at the rest of them.

"Then go east to drop Dag and I in Crimea," Bors said, leaning across to help, drawing the line himself.

"And then us up near the Don River," Galahad said to Gawain, also helping to mutilate the table.

"And then me directly south to the Caucasus," Jess said, drawing the line in even though it was upside down and she wasn't sure if she was even going towards the right line of triangle shapes that she assumed were mountains.

Dagonet laughed. "You've got the longest journey home and you've been here the shortest amount of time."

She shrugged. "I guess it balances out."

"Are we taking Eunyphore home to Hellas1, Galahad?" Lancelot asked him. "And Cimmeria, is she going home to wherever in Scythia she lives?"

Galahad and Tristan both looked uncertain, and Jess smiled slightly, thinking of what Campbell, her friend from Toowoomba, would be doing to the poor Scythian girl now if she could see the look on Tristan's face.2 Then she sighed. Not only did she miss her friends, she was about to be cast adrift into a world where she had absolutely nowhere to go. She didn't even know specifically where the Caucasus was, let alone how to get there, and they were going to abandon her near the Don River, wherever the heck that was. All she had to go by was a rough sketch on the top of a table, and she couldn't very well take it with her.

"Where _are_ the girls?" Gawain asked her, breaking through her slightly hysterical mental soliloquy.

She shrugged. "Even if they had told me, they'd probably be gone from wherever it is by now."

They all looked at each other and Jess got the feeling that as soon as they had mentioned the girls they all wanted to go and see their respective love interests.

She sighed again and stood up. "I think I'm going to go for a walk,"

Lancelot caught her up just outside the central courtyard where they had all been – for want of a better phrase – getting drunk. "So where are we going?"

She shrugged. "A look around, I guess. I haven't seen practically any of this town."

He laughed derisively. "It gets pretty tired pretty fast, I have to tell you. It's not really all that magnificent."

She shrugged again. "I also have to find Arthur and ask him if I can take the previous gildatore's armoury and Bartatua back to Sarmatia with me."

He nodded. "Then I shall give you the grand tour first, and then we shall partake of a spot of Arthur hunting,"

She laughed at him. "You're hopeless,"

He grinned at her. "It's all in the eye of the beholder, my dear. Shall we?"

She laughed again, helplessly, and allowed him to steer her off towards the direction of where she vaguely remembered going to reach the Round Table.

-------------------------

They searched the whole town for Arthur and came up with nothing, but when Jess thought about it, she already knew where he would be.

"Is there a cemetery here?" she asked Lancelot.

He nodded. "Down near the north gates. But why would Arthur be there?"

She shrugged. "Guinevere said he's been thinking a lot about his father lately."

"Ah," Lancelot said slowly. "Shall we go and have a look?"

They turned up at the graveyard and found Arthur, but he was talking to Guinevere, and they looked at each other and decided wordlessly that they probably shouldn't interrupt. She was just about to suggest that they should come back later when Arthur turned and walked away from Guinevere, and then looked surprised to see them.

"How are our Saxon friends?" he asked them, walking away and leaving them to follow.

Jess and Lancelot exchanged a look. "They were with Cimmeria, weren't they?" she asked him.

He shrugged helplessly. "I don't know,"

"Perfect," Arthur muttered. "Just what I need. A Saxon warlord loose in the town."

"It's not that bad, Arthur," Lancelot said, slightly shocked at his bad mood. "Cimmeria isn't stupid enough to leave them by themselves, and, besides, they're only two people."

Arthur sighed and stopped, turning to face them. "Was there something in particular you wanted to talk to me about?"

Jess nodded. "I was wondering if I could commandeer some other things from your previous gildatore's armoury to take home. And I was also wondering if I was going to be allowed to take Bartatua with me."

Arthur passed his hand over his eyes and nodded. "It's all fine. Do you remember where to find all the stuff?"

She nodded. "I think so. In the big building that looks like a church?"

He sighed again. "That's the one. Now, if you'll excuse me."

He walked off, and Jess and Lancelot exchanged a confused look.

"What was that all about?" he asked, shaking his head.

Jess turned around and saw Guinevere still sitting near Arthur's father's grave, her head in her hands. "I reckon I could make a pretty good guess,"

Lancelot nodded speculatively. "I think you're probably right. Anyway, where's this big building that looks like a church?"

She frowned, remembering. "It's up near the stables, isn't it?"

"Oh. You mean the church," he said, and then laughed at her face.

"Shut up, Lancelot," she said, as she walked off.

-----------------------------

It was late afternoon, just before sunset, and they were once again seated around the crowded and now defaced table, this time with the addition of Cimmeria, Eunyphore and Maechises, Gawain's girlfriend – whose name Jessamine had still not managed to catch – and Vanora and all of her brood.

"Tell us a story!" one of Bors' children begged, tugging at Dagonet's tunic.

Dagonet shook his head. "I've told more than my fair share of stories this month. I think it's someone else's turn."

"Well, I told the last one," Gawain said, dislodging another of Bors' kids from his leg.

Lancelot laughed. "I think we've all done a fair few stories. There remains, however, one person at this table who hasn't told any."

Jess sighed.

"All right. I'll tell the story if you will all help me act it out," she said, rising and moving around to stand in front of the table.

"Agreed," Galahad said, grinning.

"Right," she said, mentally deciding which epic story from 2007 she would get them to re-enact, and deciding on the first, and the best.

---------------------

"And so, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli ran after the orcs, trying desperately to free their hobbit friends."

She frowned at Galahad, who was laughing too hard to convincingly portray Legolas, and waved them across their makeshift stage after Lancelot, who was carrying two of Bors' children on his back.

"Can I stop running now?" he asked, out of breath.

"Yeah, all right, that's enough," she said generously, and he collapsed onto a bench, still carrying Number 7 and Number 9, or Merry and Pippin, as it were. "Anyway, the three hunters entered a land called Rohan, the land of the Horse Lords."

"Finally, some decent characters," Gawain said from his bench. "When do I get to come back?"

She laughed at him. "Right now, as a matter of fact. You are now Éomer, the king's nephew."

So far it had been a well-received story, starring Tristan as Aragorn – and how well he fitted the part – and Galahad as Legolas, Bors as Gimli, Dagonet as Gandalf, Gawain as the now departed Boromir, Cimmeria as Arwen, Eunyphore and Maechises as Galadriel and Celeborn, Number 3 and Number 6 as Frodo and Sam, Gilly as Gollum, and Lancelot as Saruman, Elrond and any other parts that needed doing (he would probably end up playing the Ents once they reached Fangorn Forest).

Dinner came and went and she was forced into continuing the story, and they had just retreated into the walls of Helm's Deep when Jols came sprinting into the courtyard.

"You'd better all get up on the wall. There's something you need to see."

The points of light from all the Saxon campfires as they set up outside the Wall glowed in the late night air, mirroring the stars in their many thousands.

"Oh, bugger," Cimmeria said, and Jess agreed.

1 The ancient name for Greece.

2 Campbell is, needless to say, an avid Tristan fan. Pascoe likes Galahad and Fulwood thinks they're all cool, but Campbell is obsessed with Tristan.


	7. Chapter 7

Jess sat on her bed with her head in her hands and wondered what the hell she was going to do. Even if by some freak chance involving her presence and the survival of Dagonet the knights decided not to go back to the battle – an event through which she would have to watch out for approximately one thousand Saxon foot soldiers and crossbowmen, the rain of flaming arrows from the Wodes, oil fires and, most importantly, Tristan and Lancelot, all the while swinging her swords, which she technically would not even be qualified to take to the practice ring with, let alone a full-scale battle – she was going to be left somewhere near a river that wasn't called now what it had been called in 2007 and so therefore didn't give any indication whatsoever of its actual location.

She sighed. It's moments like these you need Minties, she thought to herself glumly, and I don't even have any.1 They won't be invented for probably two millennia.

She looked over at the rest of the stuff she had removed from the church's gildatore fund as it lay propped up against the walls of her room. A tall, black myrmillo – or, in English, of Greek design – helmet and a long pennon with what she assumed was the symbol of the gildatorae on it, a pair of knives to go in the sheaths in her boots and a chain mail neck piece for Bartatua all sat in the corner, glinting slightly in the moonlight that was filtering in through her window.

There was a quiet knock on her door and she looked up to see Lancelot enter and come and sit beside her on the bed.

"So," he said quietly.

"Indeed," she said, sighing.

They were both silent for a while.

"As long as we're trying for filler words that can be used as whole sentences, I should probably use "well," but you're going to have to do the next couple because I've run out."

He sighed. "We've decided that we're still going home to Sarmatia."

She nodded. "I thought you might,"

He looked at her. "Are you going to come with us?"

She thought about it and then mentally shrugged. Better to at least try for an easy way out instead of volunteering straight up for the massacre. "Yes,"

He nodded and she put her head in her hands again, yawning and rubbing her tired eyes. She hadn't slept at all last night – spending half of it waiting for Lancelot to get off watch and then the other half having to do her own watch duty, discovering to her incredulity that Arthur had actually put them down for back-to-back half-night-each shifts. She was rather surprised that she was still on her feet.

"That was a good story you were telling earlier," he said, grinning.

She laughed. "Yeah, I like it."

"How does it end?"

"Happily," she said, shrugging. "I won't tell you anything else, though. You have to wait till we act out the rest of it."

He glared at her. "Spoilsport,"

She laughed again, hoping that there would be a time when they'd get to continue the story and wondering if she should actually tell him just in case she wasn't around by the time there was one.

"How long does your clan expect you to be gone for?" he asked.

She shrugged, thinking that no one would have actually known a specific time frame. "We weren't told any specific amount of time. They'd probably give up on me if I didn't come back for about a year, though."

He nodded, and then cleared his throat. "Would you… how… I was thinking that maybe you could, um, stay with my clan for a while when we get back to Sarmatia. I mean, you know, it wouldn't be permanently and you could leave whenever you wanted and I… you know, its closer to Gerrhi…"

She smiled at him. "Okay,"

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Great,"

"Well,"

"Oh, crap, we're doing it again."

"So it would seem."

They both laughed, although probably for different reasons, seeing as Jess was remembering the use of that line in _Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl_.

"I'd never seriously thought about actually going home," he said, looking down at the floor. "And now, here I am. On my way tomorrow."

She nodded. "I guess you probably didn't let yourself hope just in case you never made it and got too disappointed."

He shook his head. "I think I probably didn't let myself hope because it would have made all the pointless waiting so much harder. Galahad reckons hope kept him going, but I think if I'd been constantly dreaming about going home, the fact that I could never get there would have driven me insane."

She sighed. "I guess both points of view make sense. I have to admit, I would be doing the same thing as Galahad in that situation, not you."

He shrugged. "You're both dreamers,"

She laughed. "I guess I am, a bit,"

He nodded. "I'm the exact opposite,"

They were both silent for a bit longer until he cleared his throat and stood up. "I should probably get going,"

"You don't have to," she said, also standing up.

He grinned at her. "Whatever my lady wishes,"

------------------------------

Meanwhile, as Guinevere told Arthur that there mightn't be a day after tomorrow, Vanora agreed to go home with Bors, Gawain asked his girlfriend – Egreyne – to marry him, Galahad convinced Eunyphore to go home with him, Ytria told Cynric that if he was staying to fight with Arthur she would as well and Tristan and Cimmeria finished doing something a little more physical and decided to go home together, Gilioneron watched, shaking his head, from his separate but adjacent world.

Having enlisted the help of the omnipotent Zeus to sort out the dilemma that was Jessamine – he had chosen to pass up on omnipotence because it was so much work – he now knew that she came from a different dimension. He was mildly puzzled by the fact that she managed to fit in so well, but at the moment he was mulling over a different problem in his head.

Even though Kelermes was gone from Jessamine's body, she still _seemed_ like a gildatore. And he could tell a gildatore when he saw one. So could the knights, for that matter, and they had been around her the whole time and hadn't noticed a thing. Being, as he was, a God, Gilioneron had a vague prophetic idea of basically all the major things that were going to happen a week or so in advance, and he knew that there was a big battle coming up; one that involved not only the Saxon and Wode armies but also his six knights and Jessamine.

And there was also the matter of her horse, Bartatua. The animal itself was an enigma; untiring, swift, strong, loyal and intelligent. It was rare to find more than two of these in any good horse, let alone all of them, and it seemed to have chosen her specifically. Not even Dagonet, one of the best horsemen of this generation, had been able to ride him, but the big, black horse had accepted Jessamine immediately. Gilioneron could feel something familiar about the big horse, but that was hardly surprising. It could be any number of fallen knights come back to the earth, but it still didn't explain his rather unusual proficiency of talent.

Gilioneron sighed and longed for the days when everything had been easy. The days before the Romans came.

---------------------------

When Jess woke up, Lancelot was nowhere to be seen, and she could tell from the light coming through the window that the sun was about to rise. Guessing that they would probably have to make an early start to avoid becoming Saxon fodder, she yawned, stretched and then levered herself out of the bed. She decided against putting her armour on straight away – it was too much trouble – and instead climbed into her blue dress, which was now slightly green in places from grass stains and wearing thin in others from sitting in the saddle for too long. Still yawning, she pulled on her calfskin boots, bundled up everything else that she owned – not much – and then walked out the door, wondering vaguely where she would find the knights.

The caravan was massing just outside the east gate, and there was quite a lot of them. A whole cart for Vanora and all her children and Lucan, and another for everyone's gear and belongings, as well as the other girls who had decided they were coming. She dumped her meagre collection of stuff in the corner of the cart and walked back up to the stables for Bartatua, reflecting as she did so that no one had really heard anything about Cynric and Ytria. Were they leaving with the Roman contingency? Were they staying to fight?

As she was walking up to the stables she met Lancelot coming back with both his horse and Bartatua. He handed her the reins, smiling, and they turned and walked back to the caravan in companionable silence, leaving their horses to graze on the verge next to the road and going to see if there was anything that needed doing. Galahad nodded at her as he walked past, leading his horse Papaeus, and the big grey snorted at her, tried to eat her dress and then kept walking. Watching after them, she shook her head in wonder that she actually considered herself to be accepted by these people. Back in 2007 she had had to struggle for recognition, let alone acceptance or friendship.

She turned to look at the big hill that separated them from the north gate and saw Arthur, or rather saw his horse and heard the faint roar and hum of the wind through the holes in his pennon. Beside him, though, she saw a man standing, wearing furs, and his distant silhouette looked as much like Cynric as she could guess from that distance.

Their big horses all stirred and shifted position nervously as Ytria came running down to the caravan from the township, her now braided blonde hair flying behind her. She grabbed Jess as she arrived and, after waiting for a second to catch her breath, pulled her back up towards the town.

"Where are we going?" Jess asked her curiously. "And what's the rush?"

Ytria sighed, or as much as was possible after her athletic exertions. "Cynric and I are staying to help Arthur… and he told me to ask you to show me where the gildatore's armour is kept."

Jess nodded. "You're going to fight?"

The small Saxon girl nodded. "I have to help Cynric. He's hoping to challenge his father, and he's going to need a witness on the battlefield to prove that it was a challenge and not murder."

Jess shook her head. "I will never understand Saxons,"

She led Ytria to the church and then leaned against the wall to watch as Ytria picked her armour and then her swords. Her sweet braided pigtails looked very out of place against the black leather and iron chain mail of her armour, and the fact that she was about two inches too short made her look ridiculous, but she took a short Greek sword down off the wall and unsheathed it like she knew how to use it, so everything technically suited her better than it did Jess.

Jess smiled to herself as she thought about what Will Smith had said in a similar position in _Men In Black_.

"The difference between you and me is: I make this look good."

It was then that she realised that she didn't even miss the 21st century. Sure, she missed her friends, and she was aching to play her 'cello, but she didn't miss the movies or the Internet or the guns or the computers or the school at all. She had it all stored in her memory and she didn't need any more additions to clutter everything up. In fact, she was even beginning to enjoy the fact that she could look up at the sky at night and the stars would be brighter than any panorama of lights could ever be, or that she could go for a walk and get lost in a real live forest. Not only that, there was no legal drinking age, so she didn't even have to worry about breaking any laws.

She thought about it as she walked back down to the caravan. It was good, in a way, because her future wouldn't be marred by various fruitless attempts to figure out a way to get back home, but it was also slightly embarrassing that she would choose the squalor and disease and uncertainty of life of the Dark Ages over clean, safe 2007, especially seeing as her life here in Britannia may well not last beyond today.

Shortly after she arrived back at the caravan they were all loaded, and as they all mounted and started to ride out, Jess looked up and saw a small, female silhouette on the hill next to Arthur and Cynric.

"May all the Gods be with you, Ytria," she said quietly. "I know they're not here with me."

Bors cantered out from their coloumn and up to the base of the hill. "Artorius!"

Arthur's silhouette turned, and they could tell he was looking at them. Lancelot looked down at his hands, and Jess could tell that he felt bad for leaving Arthur here by himself. Bors shouted whatever it was that they all said as a battle cry, and Dagonet joined in, and it wasn't long before they were all shouting it. She even joined in, even though she didn't know what the word was, what it meant or if she was saying it right.

There was silence for a while and then Arthur countered with a battle cry of his own, and Cynric and Ytria beat their swords on their chests and said some kind of Saxon war cry as well.

In the silence that followed, Bors turned and cantered back to the road, and they recommenced their riding towards the gate. Jess, knowing what was coming next, braced herself.

They were nearly out the gate when the Saxon war drums started behind them. Their horses, having experienced a lifetime of battles mostly starting with the beating of drums, immediately spooked and tried to turn to face their next battle. When they had all calmed their horses down, they tried to avoid looking at each other, but the inevitable became reality and they all saw in each other's faces the revelation that this was a fight they needed to take part in.

_Oh, bugger_, Jess thought explosively to herself.

Tristan looked at Goetosyrus, perched on his arm, and launched him into the air. "Go on. You're free,"

The eagle circled a few times and then alighted on one of the railings on the caravan, coming back to his master even though he had been released.

The girls all looked at each other, obviously being able to read their respective consorts' minds. Cimmeria got down out of the caravan.

"You'd better at least put your armour on,"

---------------------------

Their horses surged up the hill, Jess discovering that it was very difficult to carry a pennon – which she'd had a sneaking suspicion she might need – whilst going upwards. This was made worse by the fact that Bartatua, in an inexcusable and completely unprovoked outburst of showmanship, reared up high onto his back legs as soon as they had reached the top of the hill. It was lucky she was already leaning forward in the saddle or she would have fallen off completely.

She looked at Lancelot as he sat his horse beside her. He didn't even look nervous, but her heart was beating faster than it ever had before and it was lucky she had gauntlets on or she'd have dropped her pennon. She clenched her fist on the reins and closed her eyes. She heard the horses champing at their bits, heard the twang of Tristan's bowstring as he fired the shot that would kill the traitor, heard the whistle as the arrow slid through the air, heard the stamping of their horses' feet. She could smell the oil and the smoke and the ever-present aroma of horses, and the stiff, oily smell of leather, as well as the smell of grass and rain.

She was vaguely aware of Arthur making his inspirational speech to them all, but she didn't hear a word of it. She opened her eyes and looked at the sky, noting the greenish cast that indicated fog was on the way later that day. She came back to the real world just in time to see Arthur turn Palagius rather forcefully towards the direction of the gates and draw his sword.

"Rush!" he shouted, again, and as they all joined in Jess let the word course through her veins with her blood, changing her apprehension to excitement and bloodlust, but it faded as soon as their voices did, and she was left staring at the battlefield that could very well be the place she would last stand. Breathe. Be. Live.

They dug the bases of their pennons into the ground and then cantered off down the hill to lower ground, and she saw Cynric give the signal to the two men on the gate to open it. The two unfortunate gatehorses heaved on the heavy gates, and Jess could see the mass of fur through the gates that was the Saxon army.

They all heard quite clearly the battle cry from the part of the Saxon army that was directed through the gates, and the stamp of their feet on the ground. The gatesmen pulled their terrified horses back behind the gates, and as soon as the Saxons were through the gate, they pushed the gates closed, untethered the horses, scrambled onto their backs and galloped away to the shelter of the trees. The Saxons milled, confused, on the plain, until one of them spotted the knights sitting patiently on their grassy knoll and they recommenced their march.

Arthur raised one hand and pointed it at where Jess guessed Guinevere and the Wodes were lying in wait. The first rain of arrows killed a fair few Saxons before they got it into their heads to raise their shields, and Arthur nodded at them all, the signal for them to ride out.

They galloped through the mist towards the waiting Saxon army, and for Jess everything slowed until one of Bartatua's strides could have taken five seconds. She closed her eyes and put her right hand on the hilt of the sword attached to Bartatua's saddle. As her horse's muscles unfurled and bunched underneath her the hilt grew warm in her fingers, and she remembered Tristan saying that it was a good blade.

As she closed her eyes and let her horse guide her towards a group of men that she had to kill, the normal thunder of his hooves muffled by the soggy turf, she heard the steely whisper in her mind of the sword as it spoke to her of all the lives it had taken.

Sarmatians, Scythians, Wodes, Saxons, Gauls, Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians, Medes, Huns, Romans, Lydians, Sakas, Iberians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Norsmen, Celts, even an unlucky bear. It whispered each of their names in her mind and she shook her head, not believing what was happening, and underneath her the bunch and flow of Bartatua's muscles got faster.

_Rush, my gildatore_, a voice in her head whispered, and her whole body sang to the sound of that voice, the voice of her God, as she found him – and thus herself – at last.

She opened her eyes and risked one last look at Lancelot before she drew the sword from its sheath, the steely ringing sound it made adding to her internal symphony.

"Rush!" she screamed, and the others joined in.

They cut a wide scythe through the Saxon legion, and the unwary soldiers were either run down or cut down as they swung their swords wildly. As the Saxons turned to prepare themselves for another onslaught from the knights, the Wodes fired again, and there were many Saxon soldiers who didn't know what had hit them until they died – when they guessed that it was probably an arrow.

They reached the end of their charge and immediately doubled back to go again, and Jess felt her blood surge as another of them started the battle cry; she was too far gone to even distinguish whose voice it was.

They galloped up and down the field, playing cat and mouse with the Saxon crossbowmen, until there was one man left, and by the looks of the Wode arrow in his belly he wouldn't last much longer either. Arthur nodded at the gatesmen, who had emerged and re-tethered their horses, and they opened the gates and immediately headed for cover again.

The last Saxon in Cynric's former legion stumbled out through the gates and up to the feet of his chief, where he died.

Cerdic raised an eyebrow, turned and nodded at one of his sub-commanders and then stepped over the Saxon's body.

--------------------------

The remaining Saxons came marching through the gates and Jess steeled herself, drew her Scytho-Median sword with her left hand and then followed Arthur and the others as they rode back out of the range of the trebuchet the Wodes had assembled on the hill. Arthur gave the command to fire and the Wodes, led by Guinevere and Cimmeria, who had hurried to join them, fired flaming arrows into the carefully placed tar pits, creating a wall of flame that effectively halved the Saxon army – or at least put some on the outside and some on the inside. The proportions were a little off to be saying half.

The now wary Saxons were again caught off guard by the unexpected attack of the Wodes, but after a few seconds they rallied and charged as well. Arthur looked at Merlin, standing on top of the hill beside the catapults that the Wodes had so painstakingly crafted that last night, and lowered his hand.

She heard the whistle, creak and thud of the trebuchet as the massive wooden frames hurled huge boulders coated in burning pitch into the portion of the Saxon army not trapped in the ring of fire, and the knights rode out again, this time to engage in close combat with the Saxon hordes. As they charged, Cynric and Ytria appeared alongside them, both riding on tall bay horses.

The battle was long and bloody, less so until she was dragged off Bartatua's back by a tall, scarred Saxon who was surprised to find himself on the pointy end of a long curved sword shortly afterwards. She reacted instinctively to each blow that was swung her way, parrying with the longsword on her better side and slashing with the sabre in her left hand.

After about ten minutes of fighting she wasn't even aware of the situation. All she knew was that the Saxons were trying to kill her, and she had to kill them first to stop them. The battlefield and her view of the big picture narrowed to the five square metres around her, most of it obscured by a red haze she later surmised was what was known as being berserk. Even months later she remembered nothing up to the point where she looked around and discovered that there were no Saxons trying to kill her at that point.

-----------------------

Tristan stood before Cerdic on the battlefield, the Saxons and Wodes around them all too busy to notice. Tristan drew his sword. Then he saw, behind the Saxon chief, Cimmeria fighting with a hulking Saxon soldier wielding a huge lead mace and a longsword. He saw them just in time to watch her get slashed across the stomach, and she collapsed on the ground, trying to crawl to away backwards from the swing of the deadly mace.

Tristan sheathed his sword, turned away and whistled for his horse. Cerdic raised an eyebrow, and then his sword, preparing to impale Tristan as he mounted, but as he brought his sword downwards he was jerked backwards and felt a cold steel blade at his throat.

"By the power given me by the Gods, I challenge you for the right to lead the Saxon people," Cynric whispered in his ear.

-----------------------

Cimmeria kicked the Saxon knight's legs out from under him and rolled away, narrowly avoiding the fall of the bone-shatteringly-strong lump of lead with spikes on it that was masquerading for a civilised weapon. She screamed as the big soldier put a dagger in her back and scrambled to her feet faster than he could. Caught off balance, the Saxon unsheathed another dagger, but she was again faster and stuck a sword in his stomach. Just at the moment when she stabbed him, another blade came through his chest from the back, and as the bastard collapsed off both swords she looked up to see Tristan.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

She shrugged and then pulled the dagger out of her back. "I don't think so,"

He nodded and then swung her into his arms, carrying her towards some of the Wodes had set up a makeshift first aid station in the shelter of the trees.

------------------------

Inside the ring of fire, Guinevere and Arthur fought side by side, he having turned up about two minutes ago to defend her against a particularly vicious Saxon who had attempted to make Guinevere a head shorter, and she had the wound to prove it.

Gawain was fine apart from a crossbow bolt in the shoulder and looked as though he didn't need any help, especially not when he teamed up with Galahad.

"How've you been?" Gawain asked him, slicing a Saxon arm off and then breaking the man's neck with his own mace.

Galahad shrugged after knocking another Saxon unconscious with the man's shield. "You know, not too bad. I see you're still breathing,"

Gawain grinned at him. "It's fear that's keeping me alive, mate. If I die, Egreyne will bring me back and then make the rest of my life hell."

Galahad laughed and nodded. "Women, eh?"

They both laughed and continued slicing, stabbing, slashing and beating people.

Guinevere looked at Arthur and shook her head. "Men,"

------------------------

Jess spotted, across the battlefield now covered in dead bodies as well as living, Cynric engaged in a fight with his father, and Ytria standing and watching, obviously playing the witness as she had promised. Unfortunately for her, though, the Saxons around her didn't seem to be respecting that office and one grabbed her by the hair and put his sword at her throat, distracting Cynric, who then had a gash put in his back from shoulder to hip by his father.

Jess started running across the field, trying not to trip over the bodies, to reach the now struggling Ytria. She parried a thrust from a Saxon warrior and slammed her closed fist with the hilt of her sword clenched in it into his fist. He went down, reeling, and she continued running.

What she didn't notice was that the man behind her staggered to his feet again, and spotted something lying on the ground, kicking one of his fallen comrades off it and picking it up.

Cynric knelt on the ground with his father behind him, the look on his face showing that he was in great pain. His father sighed happily and put the blade of his sword against Cynric's neck.

"I've been waiting for this moment ever since you could hold a sword, my worthless son," he said, raising the blade to take a deadly swing.

Cynric looked at Ytria across the vacant circle of space that had surrounded their dueling space and clenched his fist around the hilt of his sword. Before his father could bring his blade down, Cynric thrust his up backwards until he felt it connect with something solid. Then he stood up and in one swing cut his father's head off.

Breathing hard, he turned to the pack of Saxons surrounding Ytria.

"Saxons! I have challenged my father for the right to lead you, and I have won! Saxons! Lay down your arms!"

The men in the immediate vicinity threw down their swords reluctantly, complying only when Dagonet, Bors, Lancelot and Jess, who had just arrived to save Ytria, began attacking those who didn't.

She grinned at Lancelot across the circle where there were no bodies, and he flashed her one of his own, but then the exhilaration in his eyes turned to panic as he saw something behind her. She turned, not quite quickly enough, and the crossbow bolt the man she had punched before fired caught her in the side, just underneath the ribs, knocking the breath out of her.

Her grip on her swords loosened and she bent over, trying to breathe. He threw the crossbow away, grinning in satisfaction, and then punched her in the face, returning the favour, and she fell to her knees, dropping her swords. He stepped forward and grabbed her by the throat, crushing her neck in his huge, gloved hand. She managed to grab one of her daggers and sink it into his stomach, but he just tightened his grip. The pressure loosened, finally, when Lancelot ran him through and pushed him backwards off her, but she was still winded and, try as she might, she couldn't get any air into her constricted windpipe.

The last thing that she saw before everything went black was Lancelot's concerned face.

1 Since I don't actually know where you – the readers – come from, specifically, I should probably point out that this is an Australian thing. There a sort of mint-flavoured lolly thing, and on the wrappers it has cartoon pictures of people in situations like getting electrocuted or run over, and it says "It's moments like these you need Minties." Sorry for any Australians reading this.

P.S. Don't worry - this is only the end of the chapter, not of the story.


	8. Chapter 8

When Jess woke up, she was lying on a pallet in a stone room, and the first thing she noticed was that there appeared to be beads hanging over her face. Then, shortly afterwards, she noticed that the right side of her face felt very stiff, and different from the left side, but she put a hand up to touch her cheek and it didn't actually seem any different. After a while, she noticed that the stiffness continued down her right side, including her neck, shoulder and down her side. _Then_ she noticed that she was wearing a dress, and wondered suspiciously who had put her in it.

She sat up, accidentally knocking the beads out of the way in the process, coughed as she inhaled the clouds of smoke that several incense sticks around the pallet had created at about hip height in the room and then hauled herself to her feet through the tangible haze of lavender-smelling smoke. Waving some of it away, she walked towards the door, and then remembered about the crossbow bolt. She couldn't feel any pain, even when she pressed on the area where the wound had been, and wondered suspiciously if the smoke was really dope, a condiment the Scythians had had a _lot_ of fun with once they discovered its vision-inducing properties.

She held her hand over her face and waded towards the door, but when she opened it she stumbled out into a room where all of the knights and all of their girls were sitting and listening to something Merlin was saying. They all looked at her as she slammed the door after her and then began to cough again.

"I thought you said it would take her a couple of hours to wake up," Arthur said, looking at confusedly at Merlin and then back Jessamine.

Merlin nodded. "That's what I thought I said, too. Perhaps the incense was a little strong."

"You don't say," Jess said weakly, stepping down off the stairs.

Cimmeria, Ytria and Guinevere all hugged her at the same time, and she could tell by the look in Lancelot's eyes that there would be a bit of private hugging there later.

"Has anyone got anything to eat?" she asked them all, and Arthur laughed and sent Jols to find some food for her.

She sat down beside Lancelot and then looked around at the full compliment of knights that Arthur still had. "I take it the plans for going home have come into question?"

They all looked at each other and then grinned at Arthur.

"I hope you don't object to us staying around for a while," Gawain said, laughing.

Arthur sighed. "Just when I thought I'd gotten rid of you all,"

Jols came back holding a plate with some burnt chicken and some bread on it, and a goblet full of wine. She looked resignedly at the unappetising food and then took the goblet. It was good red wine, but after she had taken a mouthful of it, it was her reflection in the liquid that had her attention.

She put her hand up to her right cheek as the reason for the stiffness on her right side became obvious. The same symbol that had adorned the top of her pennon was tattooed in black and light blue ink on her right cheek, surrounded by swirling Celtic circle patterns that continued down her neck.

Guinevere smiled at her from beside Arthur. "Cimmeria and I did it while you were out. Do you like it?"

Jess looked at the pattern as it continued down her shoulder and thought about how she had always wanted a tattoo. "Yeah, it's great. You must have been bored, though. It would have taken ages."

Cimmeria shrugged. "You were unconscious for a while,"

She nodded, raising her eyebrows. "Obviously,"

Merlin emerged from the room, coughing from the smoke fumes. "I think perhaps someone should have stayed to watch over those incense sticks."

Jess began to laugh, and after a while everyone joined in.

"So, Jessamine," Dagonet said, turning to face her. "Will you be continuing with that story any time soon?"

She laughed. "I suppose I could be prevailed upon after dinner this evening. But only if you'll continue to help me with the telling."

"Done," Tristan said, grinning, and they laughed again.

----------------------------

Roughly two months later

(21st December)

Stonehenge

They were all camped outside Stonehenge in preparation for Arthur and Guinevere's wedding later that day. There had been some fairly extensive work done on the standing stones – mostly restoration and a few new carvings, but they had also placed capstones over the gaps left between each vertical stone, and it now looked a lot more like the photos of it that Jess had seen in 2007.

Today was Yule, the solar festival that the Wodes celebrated on the winter solstice, the day from which the days got longer and warmer and the nights shorter and milder. It was therefore an appropriate time for the wedding of Arthur and Guinevere, because from then on the newly fledged kingdom of Britain would grow and flourish after the winter of the Roman occupancy.

Miraculously, the sky was clear, and it looked like the rain would hold off at least until that afternoon, much to everyone's relief, especially Guinevere, who was stressing immensely. Jess and Cimmeria had nearly had to tie the Wode girl's hands behind her back to keep from biting her nails.

Jessamine was attending Guinevere, for the simple reason that the bride-to-be had approached both Jess and Cimmeria with the problem that she couldn't choose between them and Cimmeria had shrugged it off, saying that Jess looked better in a dress. Lancelot, of course, was attending Arthur.

Egreyne, Eunyphore and Vanora were fussing over Guinevere as she got ready, and Ytria, Cimmeria and Jess stood to one side, watching amusedly.

"In a few minutes, that'll be you," Cimmeria said, nudging Jess in the side.

Jess sighed. "Please. Don't remind me,"

Ytria shrugged. "I don't know. It might be nice to see you scrubbed up for a change."

Jess gave her a dirty look. "I bathe, thank you,"

Cimmeria grinned. "She means wearing a dress,"

Jess sighed again. "Did you not come on our mission? Where I wore a dress almost every second day?"

Both girls were silent, but they were grinning. They turned their attention back to Guinevere just in time to hear her ask rather timidly if they should be helping Jess get ready as well.

Jess sighed and pulled her tunic off over her head.

"What are you two wearing to the wedding?" Egreyne asked Cimmeria and Ytria.

They looked at each other and both felt a rather pressing need to be somewhere else.

-------------------------------

The wedding was smaller than it had been in the movie, basically just friends and family on both Arthur and Guinevere's sides from amongst the Wodes. Merlin did officiate, and there was a squad of Wode archers ready to fire their flaming arrows into the sea to symbolise the renewal of the sun, but there was no cheering crowd of peasants.

Jess led Guinevere out into the centre of the circle and then turned to face her, taking the veiled circlet that Guinevere wore and then leading her to her father, Merlin, who gave her away to Arthur as well as performing the service. Guinevere wore a long, trailing light green dress, her hair piled into a knot on the top of her head, and Jess wore a fairly simple but still beautiful darker green dress that Eunyphore had helped her steal off _Troy_ – or at least, Eunyphore, being Greek, knew how to make such dresses and helped her with that one.

She had to stop herself from laughing at Lancelot's face when she took her place to Arthur's left. _I should wear dresses more_, she thought to herself as she bit her lip to keep herself from ruining the ceremony. Gawain and Egreyne, Galahad and Eunyphore, holding Maechises, Tristan and Cimmeria, Cynric and Ytria, Dagonet and some Wode girl and Lucan, and Bors, Vanora and all their children stood around them in a circle, as well as Jols, Ganis, a few Wodes and Saxons they had become friends with, Arthur's long-lost Wode uncle and Guinevere's mother.

"Arthur. Guinevere. You are one now, as are your people," Merlin said, handing them a goblet full of sacred wine for them both to drink. "Briton and Roman, Sarmatian and Greek, Scythian and Saxon, it matters not. All who live in this land now will henceforth be known as one thing only; and that is free."

Arthur and Guinevere kissed, and everyone clapped politely – except for the knights, led by Lancelot, who cheered and made inappropriate comments.

Bors, holding his youngest – who had recently been named Éomer – raised the infant to his eye and sighed. "Now I'm really going to have to marry your mother,"

"Who says I'd have you?" Vanora said dryly, taking the baby and shooing Pippin and Frodo away (after finishing the story, all children who had been involved had henceforth refused to answer to any other name but Frodo, Samwise, Merry and Pippin).

They all watched as the archers fired new life into the sun with their fiery arrows, and then, the future of the world duly ensured, they all went about their separate businesses. While the others gathered around congratulating the newly married king and queen, Lancelot rather firmly took her hand and led her off into the forest, still looking amazedly at her dress.

----------------------------

It was lunchtime, it was 2007, the weather was just turning thundery and Fulwood was nervous. Seeing as it was the holidays, she had had to run away from her parents' property out near St George, pick up Pascoe in Dalby and Campbell in Maryborough and then get all the way back to Toowoomba by bus. The reason for all this was simple. Fulwood knew quite a bit about the Celts, and she had managed to deduce basically what had happened to Jess as soon as she knew the date when Jess had disappeared.

Thankfully, the school was abandoned when the three of them broke in, carrying Jess's laptop, a DVD a torch and two mobile phones. They sat in their dorm, thinking – or at least, Fulwood was thinking. Pascoe was a little too confused to be thinking about much, and Campbell had gone to keep watch.

"So you're saying that Jess is in another dimension?" Pascoe asked.

Fulwood sighed. "You have already asked that question twice, Sarah, and the answer is still yes."

"How?" Pascoe asked, a rather more intelligent question.

Fulwood sighed. "The day that Jess disappeared was an ancient Celtic festival day when the veils between the worlds are thin. Not only that, you know how those scientists discovered that the solar winds happened about every 1500 years? We were watching the DVD _King Arthur_, and it's set approximately 1500 years ago."

Pascoe gasped. "So she's inside the movie?"

Fulwood shook her head. "You know how Jess always used to get worked up about sad movies? And we would always say that it wasn't real, it was just a movie, and then she would shake her head and say that the universe is infinite so therefore somewhere everything must exist. I think she might have been right. I think she might have gone into the dimension where King Arthur really did happen like that."

Pascoe sat down on her old bed and then shook her head in disbelief. "So what are we going to do about it?"

Fulwood cleared her throat. "Right. Today is _also_ one of the Celts ancient ceremonial days, and we're going to re-enact what happened that night with the movie and the mobile, and hopefully we'll end up where she is."

Pascoe nodded, sighing. "So how do we get back?"

Fulwood coughed uncomfortably. "That's the part I'm still working on,"

Thunder rumbled quite close to them and then, suddenly, there was a massive crack and it started to pour rain, the lightning forking through the sky. Fulwood sprinted outside, grabbed Campbell and pulled her back into the dorm room. She then turned the computer on, plugged it in at the wall, threw one of the phones at Pascoe and then motioned for her to call her number.

Since all Jess's computer would do now was load the _King Arthur_ DVD, it came up straight away, and Fulwood pressed play, put one hand on the computer and motioned for the others to do the same.

"What are we doing?" Campbell asked confusedly (she had been outside for the explanation).

"I'll explain later," Fulwood shouted, as the computer began to spark.

---------------------------

Kelermes, tired, bored and now holding a bitter grudge against Jess, waded out of the ocean – she didn't technically have a body but it was a bit of a habit – and started walking up towards the revelry at Stonehenge. Then, she felt the veil between the worlds slip open and three new girls fall through. She briefly considered stealing one of their bodies, but, seeing as the doorway was still open, she had a better idea.

Far away, Gilioneron sighed and decided that this was going to be an end on things.

---------------------------

Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell all woke up at the same time, lying under the huge tree outside the north gate of Hadrian's Wall. Fulwood sat up and then rubbed her hand where it had been touching the computer. Then she looked around.

"Holy crap, it worked!" she said, pulling herself to her feet with a low-hanging branch and then bending over to wait for her blood pressure to recede.

Pascoe was looking around her in mixed wonder and horror, but Campbell, who still didn't know what was going on, was talking constantly. "We must have been in a fire, or something, and a search and rescue team or whatever has put us somewhere safe and gone to put the rest of it out. I think I've seen this place, before, anyway; it's kind of familiar. Oh, I know! We're in Webb Park! You know, the place just down the hill from Fairholme? I remember standing here and laughing at something. Yeah, we're in Webb Park."

Pascoe shook her head and pointed at Hadrian's Wall, which Campbell was facing away from. "We're definitely not in Webb Park, Sarah,"

The three of them sat on a hill just outside the town, contemplating things.

"So there's absolutely no way to get back?" Campbell asked anxiously, for the tenth or so time.

A muscle in Fulwood's cheek twitched a couple of times and Campbell shut her mouth and looked at the ground. "Sorry,"

Fulwood sighed. "Well, the first thing we need to do is find Jess,"

Pascoe nodded. "If they haven't killed her yet,"

Fulwood frowned. "Oh, yeah. I never thought about that,"

"It's not fair!" Campbell wailed. "I don't want to die! At least not until I meet Tristan! And preferably in the 21st century, too."

She looked at Fulwood and Pascoe, who were staring in a mixture of terror and wonder at something just behind her. She turned slowly and looked up into the face of a very angry-looking local, whom she surmised probably didn't speak English. Seeing as Pascoe and Fulwood looked too scared to do anything, she stood up, brushed the dirt off her pants and then held out a hand for him to shake.

"Hello," she said, very slowly. "Me Sarah," she said, pointing at herself. "Who are you?"

He shook his head at her and then grabbed Fulwood and Pascoe by the backs of their shirts, dragging them with him toward the north.

"Well," Campbell said, affronted, and then ran after them to catch up.

----------------------------

The official wedding party was over, the rain having dampened their celebrations, and the knights and their consorts rode home in the rain. It was a lot quicker going back than it had been getting there, and by late afternoon they could see the Wall in the distance. They stopped to take refuge from a particularly strong deluge of rain, mostly for the sake of the ladies and the children, under a stand of trees, and Guinevere and Arthur disappeared for a while.

"Tell us another story!" Pippin begged, running around Jess in a circle and then hugging her knees, which were the highest part of her he could reach.

"I think it'll have to wait," Gawain said, pointing off into the rain.

A tall, blonde man wearing black leather armour and the angriest scowl she had ever seen came striding through the rain, dragging two people she supposed had done something wrong. She had no idea who it was until she could clearly see his face, when she realised in shock that it was, in fact, Gilioneron, the Sarmatian war god. They all bowed low with respect as he threw the two people he had been dragging onto the ground in front of him.

She rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn't seeing things and then looked at them again.

"Fulwood? Pascoe?"

Another figure came stumbling, breathing heavily, into the shelter and collapsed on the ground. "Well," she said, in an offended tone of voice, and Jess sighed as she recognised the voice as well as the person who it belonged to.

"_Campbell_?" she asked, incredulously.

All three of them looked up at her. "Jess?" Fulwood asked tentatively.

"Do you know these people, Jessamine?" Lancelot asked her, standing beside her and looking down at them.

"It's a long story," she said, a chill of fear creeping over her. How the hell was she going to explain this?

"It'll have to wait," Gilioneron said, looking at her. "I need to talk to you. _Now_."

"Of course," she said, and walked off, before realising that she was abandoning her friends.

She turned and appealed to them all. "Look… just… don't kill them, please. And no raping, either. If you could spread that around, that'd be great."

Pascoe and Fulwood exchanged a horrified look.

"And if you could find them… something to keep them warm, that'd be good too. Thanks," she said, before Gilioneron roared her name and she dashed off to see what it was he wanted.

They stood under a drooping tree that didn't do much to keep the rain off them. He still looked thunderous, and she stood before him apprehensively.

"I get the feeling I've done something wrong," she said, looking at his face.

He sighed. "No. It's not you,"

She let out an explosive breath of relief. "Thank God! I though you were going to kill me."

He sighed again and looked at the ground. "I have… some bad news. Do you remember, when you were fighting the Saxons at the frozen river, when something took over your body?"

Jess nodded. "It's not the sort of thing you forget in a hurry,"

"Indeed," he said, raising an eyebrow at her. "That was the spirit of one of the greatest gildatorae who has ever lived. She was seeking to destroy the knights."

Jess looked at him, confused. "But why? I mean, if she was a gildatore…"

He nodded. "She believes that any knight who submits to the ruling of the Romans is weak, and a danger to the future of the Sarmatian race."

Jess sighed. "Right. But what has this got to do with me?"

"When you entered this world, you fell through a veil between the our world and yours." She opened her mouth to speak and he continued quickly, obviously wishing to conserve as much time as possible. "Yes, I know everything. I know how your friends got here, replicating the event that brought _you_ here. You see, when you – for want of a better word – fell into our world, Kelermes, seeking a way to return to the world and… punish those knights who remain under the domination of Rome, took the opportunity to go through the gap with you. You're very lucky you got rid of her at the river, or things could have been much worse."

Jess shook her head in confusion. "So what's this bad news?"

He sighed again. "When your friends fell through the same gap, Kelermes… well, her delusions of subverting Sarmatia by herself may have fallen through, but she retains her tenacity. So, she therefore went through into _your_ world, seeking souls as sustenance to make her more powerful."

Jess was silent for a while, digesting this. "She's taking people's _souls_?"

He nodded. "I'm afraid so,"

"I have to do something," she said helplessly. "You have to help me get back to my world. I can't just let some psycho, delusional sixth-century warrior use people I might have known as fodder for a war,"

He nodded. "I thought you might feel that way. But, I will only have the power to send you, and I may not be able to bring you back. That, and I won't be able to send you until midnight."

"What do you mean you mightn't be able to bring me back?" she screamed at him. "You're a _God_, aren't you?"

He looked down at his feet. "I never expected that I would need to be transporting people backwards and forwards through worlds, so I never acquired a great amount of power in that area. I'm sorry,"

He walked off, back to the knights, but she stood still, frozen in absolute horror and indecision. The idea of letting her entire world be consumed by a maniacal female warrior and staying here with the knights was tempting, especially when she thought about Lancelot, but if she had acquired anything substantial from her time here, it had been a sense of duty, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to abandon those people like that.

She began to cry, the tears blending with the rain on her face. The past two or so months had been the happiest of her life, free of worries about school, or money, or how she was going to manage living by herself. And now, when she finally felt like she was completely free of all that crap, when she had finally put it behind her, she had to go back to save the people of their entire world, and then stay there forever. While Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell got to live a life of luxury here in the sixth century. While Lancelot would think forever that she had abandoned him; would probably go on and marry some other girl, and then be happy for the rest of his life.

She cried until her throat hurt so much that she couldn't cry anymore, and then just started punching things. After about twenty-five minutes she finally managed to pull herself together, and walked back to camp, sniffing and wiping the tears off her face. She came across her three friends from 2007, and noticed that Campbell looked a bit sad as well.

"It's terrible!" Campbell exclaimed when she saw Jess. "I can't believe how unfair it is!"

"So, Gilioneron told you, did he?" she asked, her voice hoarse from all the crying she had done.

"Tristan's got a girlfriend!" Campbell wailed at the top of her lungs, and buried her head in Pascoe's shoulder.

Jess stood silently for a moment, clenching her fists at her sides. She must have looked pretty angry because Fulwood stood up and put a calming hand on her arm.

"Jess-"

"Why the fuck are you here?" Jess asked her, quietly. "Why the fuck did you have to come here? Why? Why couldn't you have just stayed where you belonged?"

Fulwood took a step backwards, shocked. "We were just trying to help, Jess,"

"Help?" Jess screamed at her. "Help! Do you know what you've done? You've unleashed the greatest evil _this_ world has ever seen on _our_ world! And now _I_ have to go back there and sort everything out and save their arses while you three sit here and do fuck-all, whatever you want, and then, to top everything off, I can't get back! Because fucking Gilioneron never thought he'd have to transport people between worlds, so he hasn't got enough power to bring me back! So, because of your _help_ I have to give up the one chance I ever had of happiness. One chance. And now it's gone. Forever."

She walked off towards the camp and Pascoe burst into tears. Fulwood stood staring in utter shock at her best friend as she walked away and then sat down on the ground, too devastated even to cry.

-----------------------

Jess sat by herself in a log in front of their campfire and cursed herself for being so emotional. She knew she shouldn't have shouted at Fulwood and Pascoe and Campbell but she hadn't been able to help herself. She needed someone to blame, and shouting at a God, even one as humanised as Gilioneron, was probably likely to be hazardous for her health.

The knights were all off talking to Gilioneron, and the girls were all sitting over the other side of the campfire, but Guinevere came and sat beside her, looking concerned.

"Is there anything you want to talk about?" she asked quietly, and Jess shook her head. Even if talking about things made them better – which she doubted could possibly apply to this situation – she couldn't tell Guinevere the whole story because she would then find out that Jess had been lying to her for the whole time they had known each other, and, similarly, she wouldn't even be able to say goodbye to Lancelot for the same reason.

"Do you have any parchment handy?" she asked the Wode girl, her voice still croaky from all her crying. "And some ink?"

She put her armour on in silence, thankful that she now knew how to do up the strings at the back of her top by herself. She looked at the letter she had left lying on Lancelot's bedroll and hoped briefly that he could read. She let her hair out of its slide and then caught sight of her reflection in Dagonet's shield. She put a hand to her face briefly to touch her tattoos, thinking that it was no wonder that Fulwood and the others hadn't recognised her.

Bartatua, who was tethered to a tree near her, came over and nudged her shoulder and lipped at her face, and she hugged him, putting her arms around his neck and burying her head in his shoulder to smell his horsy smell. Then she blinked a couple of times and walked away, ignoring his inquiring noises and then his whinny that was on a par with "Hey! Come back here!"

She stopped in front of Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell, Bartatua still trying to get loose to come and talk to her, and sighed.

"I'm sorry," she said, looking at the ground. "I shouldn't have shouted at you, and I don't want that to be your last ever memory of me. I'm really sorry."

Fulwood stood up and hugged her. "We're sorry too,"

Jess shook her head. "It's not your fault. This isn't anybody's fault except for that freak who's trying to eat people's souls back in our world." She looked down at her feet for a while. "I missed you guys,"

"We missed you, too," Pascoe said, also hugging her.

She saw the knights come back from their secret conversation with Gilioneron and decided that now would be a good time to disappear, just in case Gilioneron had told them already.

"I have to go," she said to her friends, extracting herself and walking away, but she came back a second later. "Please. If I could ask one thing it would be that you don't sleep with Lancelot. Just… for the sake of preserving my memory, just don't, please."

She saw Lancelot looking curiously at something sitting on his bedroll and knew that she had to disappear fairly quickly.

She walked off into the night and found a nice hill to sit on to wait for Gilioneron. By the moon she could tell that it was about midnight, so she knew he would turn up soon.

"Lancelot can read, can't he?" she asked the empty night.

Gilioneron laughed. "I wouldn't have let you leave him a letter if he couldn't read."

She sighed. "How comforting,"

He sat down beside her. "You don't have to go, you know,"

She glared at him. "Don't be stupid."

He was silent for a while. "All right, I guess I deserved that."

He cleared his throat. "I don't know if anyone's told you – probably not, really, because they all think you already know – but when a girl becomes a gildatore, she chooses a particular one of my qualities to emulate. We never got around to it with you, but would you like to choose one?"

She looked at him. "What possible help could it be now?"

He looked down at the ground. "It might help you survive the fight with Kelermes,"

She shook her head. "Frankly, Gilioneron, I think I'd rather die."

He nodded uncomfortably. "Right,"

He stood up and helped her to her feet. "Good luck," he said quietly.

She ignored him and closed her eyes, and, after a while, when she opened them, she was standing in a quiet back alley of a 21st century city. She punched the wall a few times and then walked out of the alley to look for Kelermes. A body lay on the ground behind her.


	9. Chapter 9

Lancelot sat in front of the fire, staring in complete disbelief at the letter that Jess had left him. Gawain, sitting beside him, noticed the look on his face, and asked him what was wrong. Lancelot handed him the note.

Gawain read a few lines and then stood up abruptly, dropping the letter, and pulled Lancelot's swords out of their scabbards and threw them away. Lancelot glared at him.

"What's going on?" Arthur asked, suspiciously.

Egreyne, who had just picked up the letter, put her hand over her face and handed it to Tristan, who was sitting beside her.

He scanned the note, taking in most of its content, and then raised his eyebrows. "Jessamine's gone,"

"What?" Guinevere exclaimed, standing up. "What did you do?" she asked Lancelot, accusingly.

"It wasn't me!" he shouted at her, also standing up. "It was… it was bloody Gilioneron!"

Gilioneron, who was standing and talking to Bors and Dagonet some distance away, heard this, and a hunted look crept over his face.

"I have to go now," he said to Bors, and started to walk away quickly.

He was met by a barricade of angry knights and various assorted others, their arms folded, looking dangerous.

"Hello," he said innocently, feigning surprise. "Look, I'd love to stay and chat but, you know, things to do… places to be. So I'll talk to you all some other time, all right?"

They glared at him, and he coughed uncomfortably. "Um, I was just wondering if I could… possibly… get past you all. Please? I… um, really busy this time of year and I… should be getting back because of that… yes, that _huge_ war in… in… uh, Rome."

"_This_ is your God?" Guinevere asked Lancelot incredulously. "He's afraid of you,"

Gilioneron bristled with indignation. "I wouldn't say afraid, exactly,"

"You're not afraid of us?" Lancelot asked him angrily. "If I were you, I would be."

"Ah," Gilioneron said, uncomfortably. "Well, that's plain enough. But I'm afraid I'm at a loss as to what you all appear to think I've done."

Lancelot held Jess's letter up in front of Gilioneron's face and then began to read from it. "Listen to this. '_Dear Lancelot, If you are reading this, then I am already gone. Gilioneron will have already sent me back to my own world.'_"

His eyes grew wide and he backed away a little bit. "Well, you see, she's actually left a few quite important details out of that, and I-"

"Why the hell didn't you keep a closer watch on Kelermes?" Guinevere asked angrily.

"Oh," he said, in a horrified voice. "She hasn't left any details out. She's even put in a few that I didn't tell her."

"And what do you mean you can't bring her back?" Lancelot demanded. "You're a God, aren't you?"

Gilioneron laughed. "You can tell you two were meant to be together, you know. She asked the exact same question."

The temperature of the clearing lowered by a considerable amount and Lancelot's glare turned into a barely concealed mask of hatred.

"Right," Gilioneron said slowly. "Not helpful. Okay. But I mean, seriously, who would ever think that they would need to transport people into different worlds? So I didn't acquire the power."

Lancelot sighed and put his head in his hands. "But you can ask for help from other Gods, can't you? There must be at least one who deals with this sort of thing!"

Gilioneron shrugged. "None that I know of,"

Lancelot began to pace back and forth in front of them. "There's got to be one! Okay, Scythians – thunder, the sea, fire… earth, love and the sun. No, they're all useless."

"Hey," Cimmeria said, offended.

He turned to Eunyphore. "The Greeks. Come on, you must have one."

Eunyphore shook her head helplessly. "I'm sorry, Lancelot. We don't have anyone like that."

Lancelot swore and then turned to Guinevere and Ytria. "What about the Wodes? Or the Saxons?"

Cynric shook his head. "We don't,"

Guinevere nodded. "Neither do we,"

He sighed, and kicked the ground in frustration.

"I think I may know of one," Fulwood said, appearing behind them.

Gilioneron raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

She nodded hesitantly. "The branch of the Celts that sailed east to Ireland… uh, Dannu. They called themselves the Tuatha dé Dananns, and they had a Goddess who could transport them between their world and the world of fairies and leprechauns."

They all looked at Gilioneron inquiringly.

"Red hair?" he asked tentatively.

Fulwood shrugged. "I don't know,"

He thought about it for a while. "Oh, of course!" he said, hitting his forehead with his hand. "I know who this is! It's Dana! I can't believe I didn't think of that."

"I'm going to kill him," Lancelot said, moving towards Gilioneron's throat with his arms outstretched. "I'm going to kill him!"

Gawain and Dagonet wrestled him off and Gilioneron looked at him curiously. "What's wrong with you? I just solved your problem, didn't I?"

Lancelot stood up and brushed himself off. "You just sent a young girl with no fighting experience whatsoever except for a few incompetent Saxons to dispatch the greatest fighter this world has ever seen. We just wasted ten minutes trying to think of a way to get there to help her, and we discover that they were ten minutes we could have used being there already, but for your failing memory. She could already be dead by now!"

"Ah," Gilioneron said. "I hadn't thought of that,"

"What are you waiting for?" Lancelot thundered at him. "Go and find this Dana and get her to take us to Jessamine's world!"

"Right," Gilioneron said, and hurried off.

-------------------------

It was about midday, and Jess walked down the streets of what she guessed was an English town somewhere – there were too many people with indecipherable accents for it to be anywhere else. She attracted a few strange looks, but she just ignored them and kept walking. It was only when she started getting stopped by policemen that she decided she probably needed to do something about her appearance.

She walked into a clothes store where she could see a long black leather coat on one of the mannequins out the front, and asked a rather scared-looking shop assistant where she could find them. The young girl was so nervous she had to ask Jess to repeat herself twice – but, of course, this also may have been a result of Jess's Australian drawl.

She took a coat of appropriate size and two other random garments, pretending to want to try them on in the changing rooms, and as soon as she was inside and behind the curtain, she took one of her knives out.

After a bit of surreptitious searching, she located the security patch on the coat and carefully cut it out of the inner pocket, stuffing it behind the mirror so that no one would notice it. She then put the coat on and turned the collar up so that it hid the hilts of her swords. Then, seeing as she had chosen her other items of clothing from the back-facing side of a rack right next to the door, she went over to put them away and then just walked out of the store.

She was following a train of bodies. No wonder the police kept stopping her.

All along the streets there were people lying, lifeless, their friends and family helplessly trying to revive them. She could hear the distant wailing of many sirens, and guessed that the emergency services were sending a lot of ambulances and a fire crew as well, because this many people suddenly dropping 'dead' could mean a gas leak or poison in the air or something.

People still looked at her strangely as she passed, but their looks tended now to say "Sadist weirdo," instead of "Suspicious freak wearing armour."

Being a fairly small town, Kelermes had reached the outskirts fairly quickly, and Jess could see evidence that the maddened gildatore had started going into peoples' houses to get the sustenance she needed. There was a man lying half-in, half-out of the gutter, his cigarette still in his mouth, but hanging at an angle so that its still-smouldering end was burning the skin near his chin.

She knelt down and took the cigarette out of his mouth, stubbing the fire out on the ground. Then, as an afterthought, she took a cigarette from his discarded packet where it lay on the ground, and borrowed the lighter that he was still holding in his hand, for the simple reason that she needed something to distract her from all of the horror around her. If she concentrated too hard on all the bodies she'd have to stop and help them all, and then she'd never find Kelermes.

She stood on a hill overlooking the farmsteads below the city, and could only see death and destruction on the first few. She took a long drag of the cigarette and blew the smoke out in a clear stream, wondering briefly if the gildatore was consuming animal souls as well. Across the laneway from one of the ransacked properties, Jess could see a house with lights on, with a grassy meadow backing off it. She could also see people's silhouettes moving around inside the house, evidence that the soul-sucking rampage hadn't reached there yet.

She shrugged, thinking that it was as good a place as any for a cataclysmic battle between the forces of good and evil, and began to walk down towards the field, ducking through one of the flimsy fences, which thankfully either wasn't electric or wasn't turned on, because if it had been she would have been plastered to the wire and unable to move, what with all the metal she was wearing.

A sheep looked inquiringly at her as she passed, and she glared at it, just in case it was hiding Kelermes. She kept walking, mildly confused at the fact that she had left at midnight and arrived here in the sunshine, but shrugging it off. She reached the centre of the field and perched delicately on the rim of a water trough, still smoking, and then unsheathed one of her swords and began to sharpen it, at first with her whetstone but then on the metal rim of the trough, waiting for Kelermes.

--------------------------

Dana was, in fact, blonde, and although she was tiny and delicate she could certainly carry her end of an argument, as they were discovering.

"Look," Gilioneron said, trying to be reasonable but about to lose his temper seriously. "The most dangerous fighter in this world has just gone through to _their_ world and is eating peoples' souls! And when she's consumed their entire species she will come back and destroy _this_ world!"

Dana glared at him. "And whose fault is that, horse boy? Yours! And I'm not going to help you clean up your own mess."

"She will kill all of your people!"

Dana raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you really think she even knows where Dannu is? Besides, we can look after ourselves."

"Please!" Gilioneron shouted at her, getting down on his knees. "Look, I'm begging you! Please, can you just help us?"

She shook her head. "I have better things to do than provide a ferry service between worlds."

They were all silent for a while.

"I can't believe this!" Lancelot shouted, striding forward towards the Goddess, only to be restrained between Arthur and Gilioneron. "Does nothing matter to you? Will you throw away thousands of lives for a petty squabble and a mere whim? You're as bad as the Romans!"

He spat at her feet and Gilioneron covered his face with his hand. "Oh, Gods,"

Dana looked at him icily. "No human is that noble. There's got to be some other reason you're trying to get to this other world,"

Lancelot was silent for a while. "This idiot," he said finally, jerking a thumb at Gilioneron, "sent one of the girls from that world back to fight Kelermes. The problem is, she's practically never held a sword before in her life. And we have to go and help her because… I… she… oh, Gods. Kelermes is going to kill her. I have to save her. I love her."

Dana stared at him for a while longer and then smiled at him, her eyes misting. "Why didn't you say so?"

Gilioneron threw his hands in the air and turned away. "_Women_,"

-------------------------------

Jess had given up on sharpening her sword because the sound it was making was both disturbing the sheep and covering up any sounds that Kelermes might make if she were approaching. They were both fairly sharp, anyway, so it wasn't like stopping would be detrimental to her chances of future success.

She sat on the water trough for about half an hour, and, just as she had been there so long the sheep were no longer afraid of her, there was a lot of screaming from the farmhouse. Jess sheathed her swords and stood up warily, watching as a young girl broke away from the house and started sprinting towards the fields. Jess's attention, however, was on the figure that followed the girl.

She was nothing else if not beautiful, Jess would give her that. She had long, wavy black hair and she was as skinny as a rake. She was wearing black leather armour just like Jess's, and so it was no wonder people had looked at her hostilely when she hadn't been wearing the jacket. They must have thought that the two of them were on the same side.

When Jess saw the little girl start running towards the paddock she was in, she slunk away to the waist-high stone wall that formed the border with the neighbouring field and ducked down behind it. She heard running footsteps and then waited for the girl to clamber over the fence, reaching up and pulling the young girl down beside her with her hand over her mouth.

"It's all right," she said, as the girl tried to get away. "Look, go and fetch the police. I'll deal with her."

The girl nodded and Jess let her go, turning to look cautiously over the top of the wall.

"Are you a vampire slayer?" the girl asked her, looking in horror at the two sword hilts that were just visible over the collar of Jess's jacket.

Jess laughed. "I wish I was. Now, go! Quickly, before she finds you."

The young girl scrambled to her feet and bolted across the field towards the village, and Jess sighed and wished that it were her running to fetch the police and someone else doing the fighting. Then she stood up and moved to the centre of the field. Trying to hide would just make things worse, and she wanted as much room to maneuver as she could get. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on everything around her. A bee buzzed past her and she sliced it in half with one of her swords, and then sighed and turned around.

Kelermes was standing there, arms folded, staring at her. "Hello,"

Jess, her heart beating fast, to her credit, didn't double-take in shock. "Or, as they like to say here in Britain, top of the morning,"

Kelermes laughed, but it was a mirthless sound, and her eyes remained cold. "What are you doing here?"

Jess shrugged. "That's a good question. Gilioneron sent me here, I will say that."

Kelermes took a sharp intake of breath, the air hissing between her teeth. "That incompetent fool! I can't believe he made _you_ a gildatore! You're not even a Sarmatian!"

Jess gritted her teeth and unsheathed her long Sarmatian sword. "Being a gildatore has nothing to do with being a Sarmatian. A gildatore is just a priestess of Gilioneron."

Kelermes gave her a black look. "Yes, and Gilioneron is a _Sarmatian_ God."

"So?" Jess nearly shouted. "Other races have different skills. Maybe he wanted somebody different!"

"What skills have _you _got?" Kelermes asked her acidly.

Jess gritted her teeth even harder and clenched her fist on her sword, and then sheathed it again. "Diplomacy, for starters,"

Kelermes laughed again, but this time in a slightly maniacal way that was terrifying to listen to. "What quality of his did you take?"

"I chose not to take one," Jess said stonily.

Kelermes grinned at her. "I chose ruthlessness. And, because I slept with him a few times, he let me choose another."

"And that was?" Jess asked, dreading the answer.

"Oh, just power," Kelermes said, and her eyes shone with an insane light.

------------------------------

Lancelot peered cautiously out of the alley that they had all landed in and then turned back to look at the others. "You live here?" he asked Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell.

They all shook their heads. "Not here, exactly," Fulwood said. "This isn't Toowoomba, where we last were, and we don't even live there."

Dana nodded. "We came through at the point where the last person going through landed."

"So is this where Jess lives?" he asked, still incredulous.

Pascoe, who was standing at the edge of the alley, shook her head. "This isn't even the country where Jess lives. We're in England."

"England?" Guinevere asked, going to stand beside her. "Where's that?"

Fulwood sighed. "Well, basically, its… where _you_ come from, but 1500 years into the future."

"I don't think we have time for any explanations right now," Gilioneron said, looking around at all of the knights' puzzled faces. "We have to find Jessamine."

"Can you find her?" Dagonet asked Fulwood, who shook her head.

"What about you?" Cynric asked Dana. "You tracked her to here, can you find out where she's gone?"

Dana frowned for a moment, and then nodded. "I think so, yes. At least, I can track the other gildatore, and I suspect that where you'll find her, you'll find Jessamine."

Galahad nodded. "You're probably right."

"Let's go," said Lancelot, and they moved out into the street.

They got no further than five metres into a street where Kelermes had obviously not yet begun to feast before a young girl screamed and pointed at them. "Oh my God! It's Keira Knightley!"

The knights all unsheathed their swords as soon as she screamed, and Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell all exchanged a look.

"We're going to have to run for it," Fulwood said, looking at Dana.

"And Clive Owen!" another girl shouted.

"Right," Dana said, and then led the knights through the street at a run.

"What are they doing?" Arthur asked Fulwood, as they ran.

She shook her head. "You don't want to know,"

"I heard one shout that she wanted someone's autograph," Bors said confusedly. "What does that mean?"

Fulwood and Pascoe exchanged a glance. "Just keep running,"

----------------------------

Jess sighed. "This is my world," she said, gesturing around at the field, the maddened sheep that were trying with all their might to get away from Kelermes, and the distant road. "And I can't let you destroy it just to finish off the Romans when if you wait long enough they're going to cark it anyway."

Kelermes inclined her head. "Then I'll just have to destroy you, too,"

"I had a feeling you were going to say that," Jess said, unsheathing her swords.

Kelermes sprang at her with such speed that she nearly didn't see it. She certainly hadn't seen her get out her sword. She bent back just in time, leaning backwards like in _The Matrix_ as the gildatore's glowing blue sword sliced through the air where her stomach had been just seconds before. Then, as Kelermes raised the sword to bring it down, Jess leant back on her hands and finished her backwards walkover, springing onto her feet.

Then she had to parry a few times as the unbelievably fast warrior swung three overhand blows that would have at the very least broken her shoulder blades. Jess noticed that she was being backed into a corner of the field and darted away to the centre again, throwing the dagger in her right boot at Kelermes, who hit it for a six as if they were playing cricket or baseball with her sword.

Jess threw another as Kelermes advanced towards her, but the warrior ducked underneath it and then Jess only just managed to rise and step away in time to avoid another huge overhand.

_Wow_, Jess thought to herself_, she was right about the power. That blow would have shattered rocks, had there been some handy_.

She parried a few more thrusts and then managed to get a swipe of her own in, although it was pathetic compared to the standard of swordplay Kelermes was operating on. She then had to radically adjust her tactics as the gildatore started using quick, underhand, slashing attacks, one of which caught Jess a nasty cut on her left upper arm before she could manage to convert. They fought for what seemed like hours – although it was probably only minutes – Jess always on the defensive, unable to find an opening to attack and gaining more injuries the longer they spent hacking away at each other. Then Kelermes kicked her in the knee and she was so shocked she only just ducked in time.

As they kept fighting, Jess now with a bruised knee, a cut on her left arm, a slash across her stomach, a nick on her right ear and a scratch on her right thigh, the party of knights arrived at a run from the town. They stopped in horror, standing at the fence, as they watched the battle, and Lancelot was about to run forward to help Jess when Gilioneron stopped him.

"If you going running in there now, you'll distract her. It's a miracle she's still alive as it is; don't add to the odds against her."

Fulwood looked speculatively at the farmhouse and then turned to Pascoe. "I have an idea."

The two gildatorae hadn't noticed their spectators, probably because they were both concentrating so hard on their battle, but it seemed to Jess that Kelermes' strikes were getting weaker and slower. Maybe she needs more souls to keep her going, Jess thought. Just as that occurred to her, however, Kelermes looked at the sheep, still madly trying to climb the stone wall of the paddock, and swung her sword so hard that Jess's slipped out of her hands.

As she raced to pick it up, the black-haired gildatore went over towards the flock, grabbed one by the leg and put her other hand inside of its chest. When she pulled it out, the sheep fell to the ground, lifeless. Jess was so horrified she forgot to do anything until probably the penultimate sheep1, when she threw yet another dagger, but it just went through the feasting gildatore.

Kelermes walked back towards her, and swung her now madly glowing green sword – Jess supposed it changed colour based on what kinds of souls it was running on – so hard that it sliced directly through Jess's curved Scytho-Median sword. She stared at it in horror and then dropped it, running away to get back to the centre of the field again.

Fulwood came back to the group at the gate, holding a shotgun she had salvaged from the farmhouse. It was loaded, too – she came from a farm, and she knew how to use one.

Lancelot looked at her curiously. "What's that?"

"It's a sort of… super-powered crossbow," she said, raising the gun so she could sight along the shaft.2

"You can't fire it!" Pascoe said worriedly. "Not only can we not see them clearly, they move around so much you might hit Jess!"

Fulwood sighed. "It may be our only chance, Pascoe,"

It was true that the knights couldn't see them clearly. Apparently the amount of souls she had stolen had created a film of mist rising from the bodies – there had been some bits around the town, too – and basically all they could see was flashes of light green swung around like a sword. As a matter of fact, it looked rather like a lightsabre, but Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell all assumed that this probably wasn't the case.

Fulwood pointed at the glowing green object as it swung again. "That's Kelermes. We just have use the sword as a guide to where she is."

"That's a bit of a gamble, isn't it?" Lancelot asked nervously.

"I thought you _liked_ games of chance, Lancelot," Arthur said, amusedly, and then was glared at by Guinevere.

"Not when we're wagering Jessamine's life!" Lancelot shouted at him, and then clenched his fists and his jaw. "All right. But wait until you can see that the sword is swinging in a direction that indicates that Kelermes is in front of Jessamine in the range of your… super-powered crossbow."

Fulwood nodded. "Right,"

There was silence for a while.

"Will you tell me when that is?" Fulwood asked tentatively.

Tristan nodded. "I will,"

The mist that seemed to be rising off the bodies was making visibility difficult for Jess as well, especially when Kelermes started kicking her again, because she had been relying on the glowing to tell her when the sword was coming. She stumbled and tripped over the water trough, rolling away just in time to avoid being decapitated by the glowing sword, which instead cut through the same water trough.

She scrambled to her feet and then fell over again as Kelermes punched her in the face. She couldn't see the glowing green light anywhere. She turned around a couple of times and then opted for trying to run out of the mist, which didn't work when she found herself face to face with the wall. She sighed and stood with her back to it, thinking that at least she knew Kelermes wasn't behind her.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the green light appeared, and Jess surmised that Kelermes must have been holding it behind her back to hide the tell-tale glow. She parried a few more thrusts and then started to move out from the wall to get more room to defend herself.

She heard, distantly, Tristan shout something and then nearly dropped her sword. _Tristan_? What was he doing here? She then regained her composure and swung a deadly underhand attack out of the way, and then stopped in shock when she heard a gunshot.

Kelermes turned, searching for whatever new enemy had arrived, and, in that tiny moment when she let her guard down, Jess took a lesson from Cynric and swung her sword in a circle that removed Kelermes' head. The mist began to clear almost immediately and she saw some sheep start to get up and run away.

Unfortunately, it was then that she realised that the bullet fired before had hit her. She had read in a book somewhere that you didn't feel the initial impact of a bullet, and hadn't believed it, but she could now see that it was true. She dropped her sword and pressed both hands to her stomach, falling to her knees. She then nearly threw up from the pain and ended up lying on her back on the ground, both hands still desperately trying to put enough pressure on the wound in her stomach to stop any serious bleeding.

She heard, again distantly, someone shout her name, and wondered how anyone here knew who she was. But then, Gilioneron, Lancelot and some blonde girl emerged from the mist. She glared at the girl, just in case, as Lancelot knelt beside her.

"Go and fetch a… find someone who can heal her!" he shouted up at Gilioneron, who looked helplessly at the blonde girl.

"Asclepios," she said softly. "The ancient Greek God of healing."

"You heard her!" he shouted at them both, and they exchanged a worried look and then disappeared.

He leaned down and hugged her. "I'm so glad you're still alive,"

She began to cry into his shoulder. "I thought I'd never see you again,"

They stayed that way for a while before he composed himself and sat up.

He put his hands over the injury on her stomach as well and then shook his head. "What is it with you and nearly dying every fight you go into?"

She swallowed and laughed wryly. "Speak to the people who keep shooting me,"

"I love you, too," he said, looking down at her seriously.

She took a blood-stained hand off her stomach and put it over her face. "Oh, God, you read my letter,"

"Wasn't I supposed to?" he asked her, puzzled.

She nodded. "Well, yes. But the problem with those letters is that they're written in the expectation that you'll never see the addressee again. So they're always really embarrassing. Even if it was all true."

He sighed, shook his head and then leaned down and kissed her. "Will you marry me?"

She blinked a few times, shocked, and then laughed. "I don't know if this is the time, Lancelot,"

"There mightn't be another time," he said, fiercely, and she realised that he wanted to know just in case she died.

"Yes," she said, linking her blood-stained fingers with his, and he leaned forward and kissed her again.

"Lancelot," she heard Gilioneron say, uncomfortably, and looked up to see him, the blonde girl and an old guy in Greek-looking robes, who knelt on her other side and lifted their hands off the wound.

"It's serious, but I'll be able to fix it," he said, looking up at Gilioneron. "What did it, though? I've never seen anything like it before in my life! (And, being a God, I've had a long one!)"

Jess laughed. "I'd be surprised if you had. It's a sort of… super-powered crossbow. There'll be a small, metal object in the wound somewhere. Please don't heal it into me,"

He nodded. "Do you want me to fix your other wounds as well?"

She shrugged. "It might be nice,"

He nodded again and then put his hands on the bullet wound, and in less than five seconds she could feel that it was completely healed.

"My God," she said, amazedly.

"Indeed," Gilioneron said, amused.

"It's sort of a figure of speech where I come from," she said, apologetically.

"I think you're right to go now," Asclepios said, standing up and brushing himself off.

She sat up, looking at all of the places she had been injured. "This is ridiculous!"

He shrugged. "Well, I would have done a better job but I guessed that speed might be more important,"

She stood up. "No, no it's great. I just… never imagined that it would be this fast. Or good,"

"You're the one who suggested him," Gilioneron said.

"Yeah, but I'd only heard that he told people how to use herbs and things," she said, scratching her head. "The Greeks… uh, Hellenes, say he never actually _healed_ anyone."

Asclepios shrugged. "It's been a while since I last did anything, what with the Roman takeover. You get bored."

She shook her head incredulously. "Wow. I actually have something to thank the Romans for,"

Gilioneron nodded. "I think it might be time we all went home,"

They walked back towards the fence, and Lancelot reached down and took her hand. "Will you really marry me?"

She looked at him. "No, I just felt sorry for you because I was dying and now that I'm alive I'm going to run off with the first man I see. Which, unfortunately, appears to be Arthur. Of course I'll marry you! I wouldn't have said it unless I meant it."

He sighed in relief and then hugged her. "I was just afraid that you would want to stay here, in your own world."

She shook her head. "You know, to tell you the truth, I hate it here. Absolutely hate it. There may have been some people that I liked here, but the world in general was terrible. But your world is great," she smiled at him. "And not just because you're there."

He nodded. "Yeah, I quite like it,"

Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell all ran up and hugged her.

"I'm so glad you're all right!" Campbell sobbed, knocking Lancelot out of the way.

"Thank you, Sarah," she said, bending over backwards under the weight of three girls. "I'm quite glad I'm all right, too,"

"We were so afraid we would hit you with the bullet when we fired," Fulwood said, stepping back to give her some room.

Lancelot opened his mouth to say something but Jess stood on his foot and shook her head in what she hoped was an imperceptible way.

"Luckily, it didn't," she said, clearly, hoping he would get the message.

He looked at her and shut his mouth. "Yes," he said, somewhat uncertainly.

Jess looked at them all. "Now, I just have to talk to Gilioneron and then we can send you all back home."

Campbell shook her head firmly. "I'm going back to King-Arthur-land until I get Tristan's autograph,"

Jess shook her head. "Campbell, you have a family to go back to. A family who will miss you. The only reason I'm going back is because I don't. Do you really want your parents to think for the rest of their lives that you ran away and abandoned them? Tristan's not worth it, believe me."

Fulwood looked at her. "We'll miss you, Jess,"

She laughed. "I'll miss you, too,"

She hugged them all again, and then went over to talk to Gilioneron.

"What's an autograph?" Lancelot asked Fulwood.

"It's a… it's too hard to explain," she said, wearily. "Get Jess to tell you,"

"You better look after her," Pascoe said, fiercely.

"Yeah," Campbell said. "Or we'll find you. And beat you up,"

Lancelot looked at them all – one, a farm girl, one, a tiny ballet dancer and one, a slightly larger scale model of the farm girl in both directions – and nodded and then hurried away.

"I think her friends just bullied me," he said quietly to Arthur, as Jess, Gilioneron and Dana all walked back over towards them.

"It happens," Arthur said wearily. "You get used to it,"

Jess looked at her three friends and then hugged them all individually. "Goodbye, guys. You were the best friends I could possibly have asked for,"

"Except for them," Fulwood said, pointing at the knights.

Jess shook her head. "No. I mean, they're good friends, that's true, but they're not you guys." She looked at them. "Now, I know that none of you have seen the third _Pirates of the Caribbean_ movie because I refused to go because Elizabeth was evil by that point and I sort of convinced you all not to watch it either. But I want you to find it, somehow, and watch on it my birthday. In the boarding house. For me,"

Fulwood nodded, because the other two were crying too hard to do anything. "We will,"

"Now, all think about the time and place you want to go to," Dana said, concentrating.

"Right before I came to get you might be a good time for you guys," Fulwood said to Pascoe and Campbell, and they nodded, and they all closed their eyes.

After a few seconds they disappeared, and Jess sighed, and wiped the tears off her face.

Gilioneron looked at her. "Do you want to choose a quality now?"

She tilted her head on the side, thinking about it. "Do you have good-at-fighting-without-trying-but-doesn't-in-anyway-effect-my-personality-ness?"

He thought about it. "Probably,"

She nodded. "Yeah, that'll do for now,"

He laughed. "By the Gods, I'm glad you came here, Jessamine, or none of the rest of us would have anything to laugh at."

She nodded. "I have that effect on people,"

"Not to mention Lancelot, Dagonet and Tristan would all be dead," Dana said, and Gilioneron looked at her.

"What?" he asked, incredulously.

She shrugged. "That's what happened in the timeline of this world. And it would have happened in our world, too, if Jessamine hadn't arrived."

"How?" he asked her.

Dana shrugged, but Jess sighed. "It's a long story,"

He looked at her. "Later, then."

She nodded. "Whatever you say."

They walked back to the rest of the knights, and then, slowly, they both began to laugh.

------------------------------

Roughly a month and a half Later

February 1st (Imbolc)

Stonehenge

Lancelot and Jessamine were married on her birthday, which, by some happy chance, managed to fall on the day of Imbolc, the start of spring, so the marriage celebrations were tied in with the ceremonies involved in celebrating the sacred day. She turned eighteen and reflected that, although she hadn't actually had the huge party involving friends and alcohol she had always expected, she did have a party that still fit those descriptors, and it was even better than she could have imagined.

Guinevere, Cimmeria and Ytria had all been bridesmaids, and Lancelot had picked Arthur to be his best man. Gilioneron officiated, and, although he forgot the words at one stage and had to be prompted by Merlin, everything went pretty smoothly.

Dana was there, in order to instruct them in how they should properly celebrate Imbolc, and Bridget, the goddess whose day Imbolc was, also put in an appearance to bless their union. The Wodes said this was fairly common but everyone else was fairly shocked.

As she kissed Lancelot for the first time as a wife and not a lover, she thought fondly that maybe Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell were doing as she had asked this very second, and watching _Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End_.

------------------------

It was nighttime, and Fulwood – the farm girl – and Pascoe – the tiny ballet dancer – and Campbell – the other one – all sat in front of Pascoe's laptop. They were watching _At World's End_, and they were so engrossed in it that they didn't notice the weather starting to turn stormy.

Their Japanese friend Airi, who was being detained in a different dorm, kept calling Fulwood every few minutes to see where they were up to in the movie, because she had seen it several times and loved it, and kept wanting to talk about it.

They reached the stage in the movie where Will asked Elizabeth to marry him again and she replied that she didn't think that this was the right time, and the computer froze. Fulwood, who was talking to Airi at the time, put her hand on the touch pad and tried to at least pause and then un-pause the movie.

As soon as she did so, Airi's voice at the other end of the phone went all distant and fuzzy, and there was a sort of echoey sound coming out of her phone. Concentrating on the phone, she raised a fist to bang on the computer.

"What did you say, Airi? I can't hear you. There's something wrong with my phone,"

"Um, Fulwood," Pascoe said hesitantly, as she saw what Fulwood was going to do with the fist.

"Yeah, just a minute, Pascoe," Fulwood said, and then thumped the computer a good backhand.

There was a blinding flash of light, and when Campbell and Pascoe looked up, there was nothing to be seen of Fulwood but the charred remains of her mobile phone, and the computer was stuck on the title screen of the _At World's End_ DVD.

"Oh, bugger," Pascoe said, thumping the bed a good one. "And this time I have to do it all by myself!"

"You have me to help you," Campbell said, trying to be comforting, and putting a hand on Pascoe's shoulder.

Pascoe put her head in her hands. "Save me,"

------------------------

The End

------------------------

1 Sorry. I know the word penultimate is a little showy, but I mean, how many times do you really get the chance to use it? I just had to. Second last is just so boring in comparison.

2 You can tell that, although Fulwood knows how to use a gun, I don't. I don't even know if guns have shafts, but oh well.


End file.
